Alison Brie, Ashton Kutcher to hook up with Gregg Araki for new movie

The film is described as "Election meets American Beauty."

By Dennis Perkins  |  September 16, 2026 | 4:46pm
Screenshot: Criterion/YouTube
Film News Gregg Araki
Alison Brie, Ashton Kutcher to hook up with Gregg Araki for new movie

After taking more than a decade off to work in TV on shows like Red Oaks, 13 Reasons Why and Riverdale, Queer Cinema pioneer Gregg Araki this year reminded everybody that exuberantly transgressive coupling is for the movies too, with his lauded big screen BDSM romance I Want Your Sex. And according to Deadline, the groundbreaking director of boundary-pushing films like Kaboom, Splendor, and his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy ( Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere) has vowed to continue his return to the erotic dark comedy theatrical experience (and the judicious use of asterisks) in his new film, The Decline Of F*cking Western Civilization. 

Araki has signed on some high-profile and presumably up for anything stars to help him as well, as Alison Brie and Ashton Kutcher are on board, with Jesse Williams in negotiations for an unspecified but major third. Araki himself is both directing and writing, the latter alongside Kevin W. Koehler (whose script The Phantom Limb wound up on the Hollywood Blacklist of worthy but unproduced screenplays). 

There’s no word yet on the film’s plot, except hints that the ensemble piece combines Election and American Beauty in some presumably unsettling, intergenerational manner. And while Kutcher has been working with fitful success to outgrow his goofball image of late, Brie is no stranger to pushing a few envelopes herself, as her visceral work alongside husband Dave Franco in 2025’s body horror Together all but erased memories of Community‘s perpetually innocent Annie Edison for all time. 

 
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