Cooper Hoffman joins Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex as Olivia Wilde's sexual muse

A clearer picture of the next generation of movie stars is starting to take shape. It’s not much of a surprise that Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s kid is one of the ones emerging at the forefront, but it bodes well for his career that Cooper Hoffman has signed on to the latest Gregg Araki movie. According to Variety, Hoffman is set to star opposite Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex, the new film co-written by Araki and Karley Sciortino. 

Per the synopsis (via Variety), “When fresh-faced Elliot (Hoffman) lands an exciting job for renowned artist, icon and provocateur Erika Tracy (Wilde), his fantasies come true as Erika taps him to become her sexual muse. But Elliot soon finds himself out of his depth as Erika takes him on a journey more profound than he ever could have imagined, into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal and murder.”

Hoffman, who will next be seen playing NBC exec Dick Ebersol in the SNL origin story Saturday Night, is carving out a bit of a niche for himself as the “young guy pursuing an older woman.” That was the theme of his star-making feature, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, in which Hoffman’s character was infatuated with an older girl played by Alana Haim. Wilde signed onto the film back in May following a turn in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon and her own (in)famous directorial effort, Don’t Worry Darling. 

“It’s a comedy, but it’s still one of my movies. … It’s about Gen Z, and it has a little bit of that old movie Secretary, another ‘old indie movie’ from the ‘90s,” Araki previously told IndieWire. He revealed that it’s inspired in part by studies that show Gen Z has less sex than previous generations: “I found that so shocking and strange. Looking back on my life, sex and sexuality and sexual identity have been key to my entire being and life and development as a person, and that’s why my films tend to always focus on those,” the filmmaker said. “Olivia plays an artist in the movie, and she says things in the movie that I have said in interviews about how sex and sexuality are kind of what make us human. They’re such an important part of growing up and figuring out who you are, so that’s part of the movie, the importance of sexuality, and Gen Z and how they’re not having sex.”