Director Will Gluck (Easy A, Anyone But You) has revealed that he “cut out so much” nudity from his new romantic comedy One Night Only because he believes modern movie audiences are now too uncomfortable seeing it on screen.
Speaking with Variety, Gluck admitted research that has found Gen Z and Gen Alpha want to see less sex on screen was very much a concern while making One Night Only.
“The answer is 100% yes,” said Gluck. “I went through this on two movies. I have long pages of empirical data about it. The only thing is I don’t think it’s just Gen Z and Gen Alpha. I believe it’s been a societal shift from taking nudity in adult situations and putting them on your phones at home for everybody. Now it’s more of a private, intimate thing that people don’t want to see when they’re in a shared experience. Whenever people now see nudity or very adult situations in a big theater, they get uncomfortable.”
As a result, Gluck confirmed “so much nudity” was ultimately slashed from One Night Only after test screenings.
“I cut out so much,” he said. “There was so much nudity in this movie that we shot on the streets. I felt we needed to show the world that way. As we started to show it to audiences, we felt it takes you out of the movie. You’re engaged in the characters and what’s going on, and then you pan over and there’s two naked people having sex, and you watch the audience … it’s a physical thing. They turn to who they’re with and … the benefits do not nearly outweigh the negatives of it. So we just kept editing it out until we got a balance, and those comments went away.”
One Night Only stars Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown, Top Gun: Maverick) and Callum Turner (Masters of the Air, The Boys in the Boat). Set in New York, the romantic comedy unfolds in a bizarre, alternate reality where premarital sex is completely forbidden outside of one 12-hour period per year.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team and grew up watching movies in the ’80s so doesn’t understand any of this. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
