Gregg Araki returns to feature filmmaking after 12 years with I Want Your Sex, a 90-minute comedy about a young man who takes a job as the studio assistant to a provocative contemporary artist — and ends up in a BDSM relationship that ignites a cross-generational debate.

Olivia Wilde stars as Erika Tracy, the artist at the centre of the story. Cooper Hoffman plays Elliot, her assistant. Charli XCX, the pop star behind the 2024 album Brat, plays Elliot's girlfriend — a role she filmed during a single day off, according to Deadline. The cast also includes Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs and Johnny Knoxville (SIFF; IMDb).

Araki, the director whose Kaboom (2010) won the Queer Palm at Cannes, described the Erika Tracy character as a cross between Robert Mapplethorpe and Madonna, with elements of himself, in an interview with Artnet News published on 29 July 2026. He told Artnet that he wove his own past press quotes about sex and sexuality into the character's dialogue. The film's co-writer pitched the project as "a comic 50 Shades," inspired by her own affair, Deadline reported in December 2025.

I Want Your Sex premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2026, where reviews noted its nudity and sex-toy props (Variety). The New Yorker called it a "kinky comedy" centred on a workplace relationship that sparks a cross-generational debate (New Yorker). Magnolia Pictures acquired U.S. rights in a seven-figure deal following the Sundance premiere, Deadline reported in February 2026. Black Bear, the production company originally attached when the project was first announced as a thriller in May 2024 (Deadline), remained behind the film.

After Sundance, the film screened at the Seattle International Film Festival and at Frameline50, the 50th edition of the Frameline LGBTQ+ film festival in San Francisco, which noted that the project marks Araki's return to features after 12 years (Frameline; SIFF). Araki also spoke to Variety in late July 2026 about Gen Z attitudes toward sex and the film's use of an intimacy coordinator — a professional who choreographs and safeguards actors during nude or sexual scenes.

Magnolia Pictures has set 31 July 2026 as the wide theatrical release date, with trailer and ticket information at magpictures.com/iwantyoursex (Deadline).

For audiences who have followed Araki since the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s, I Want Your Sex brings back the director's signature blend of desire, danger and deadpan humour — now filtered through a story about how different generations view the same acts, the same power dynamics, and the same questions of consent that have reshaped the cultural conversation since his last film.