‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Gets HBO Max Premiere Date

Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema have set a streaming premiere date for their psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling, announcing that the film directed by and co-starring Olivia Wilde will debut on HBO Max on November 7.

Don’t Worry Darling tells the story of Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles), who are lucky to be living in the idealized community of Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. The 1950s societal optimism espoused by their CEO, Frank (Chris Pine) — equal parts corporate visionary and motivational life coach — anchors every aspect of daily life in the tight-knit desert utopia.

While the husbands spend every day inside the Victory Project Headquarters, working on the “development of progressive materials,” their wives — including Frank’s partner, Shelley (Gemma Chan) — get to spend their time enjoying the beauty, luxury and debauchery of their community. Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company. All they ask in return is discretion and unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause. But when cracks in her idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning exactly what they’re doing in Victory, and why. Just how much is Alice willing to lose to expose what’s really going on in this paradise?

Don’t Worry Darling world premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival and was released by Warner Bros. on September 23. Wilde directed from a script by Katie Silberman, which was based on a story by Carey Van Dyke & Shane Van Dyke and Silberman. The film also stars KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, Sydney Chandler, Kate Berlant, Asif Ali, Douglas Smith, Timothy Simons and Ari’el Stachel. Wilde, Silberman, Miri Yoon and Roy Lee produced, with Richard Brener, Celia Khong, Alex G. Scott, Catherine Hardwicke, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke serving as exec producers.

Wilde’s latest directorial effort was more plagued by scandal than any film in recent memory, with rumors swirling of on-set conflict between Wilde and Pugh. Wilde disputed them, but there were also contradictory accounts of the reasons behind Shia LaBeouf’s departure from the role eventually to be played by Styles, which generated intrigue, and even a viral video clip out of Venice which some purported to depict Styles spitting on his co-star Pine. (The latter was dismissed as “ridiculous” by Pine’s reps, with Wilde, too, speaking out.) In any case, the film proved to be a modest success at the box office, grossing nearly $85M worldwide.