Focus Features has released the first teaser for Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film with Emma Stone, Bugonia, which will likely be headed to the Venice Film Festival before hitting theaters in October. A loose remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, the story follows two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a powerful pharmaceutical CEO, convinced she’s an alien bent on Earth’s destruction. Yep, sounds like a Lanthimos joint.
Stone plays the corporate CEO and potential alien. Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone co-star. Lanthimos directs from a script written by Will Tracy, co-writer on The Menu.
The teaser shows Plemons’ character, a paranoid beekeeper, ruminating on Stone’s corporate CEO and the damage she’s doing to the planet, including the bees which are disappearing.
This is Lanthimos and Stone’s fourth movie together following The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness. They also collaborated on a short film, Bleat, in 2022. The partnership just works, even on a movie that underwhelms as Kinds of Kindness does. They have a combined twenty Academy Award nominations together and there’s no reason to think they won’t get more.
Bugonia opens in theaters on October 24th in select theaters, October 31st nationwide.
