The duo of Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos is the gift that keeps on giving.
The pair first worked together on 2018’s darkly funny period piece The Favourite, for which Stone received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and Lanthimos received a nomination for Best Director. They followed it up with 2023’s masterful fantasy Poor Things, earning Stone her second Academy Award for Best Actress and Lanthimos his second Best Director nomination. Mere months later, Lanthimos and Stone delivered 2024’s pitch-black anthology film Kinds of Kindness. (Lanthimos and Stone also collaborated on 2022’s short film Bleat.)
Kinds of Kindness also introduced a new player into Lanthimos’ work: Jesse Plemons, whose varied performances across Kinds of Kindness’ three fables won him the Best Actor Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Now, Lanthimos, Stone, and Plemons reunite for a new comedy: Bugonia, directed by Lanthimos and written by Will Tracy (The Menu).
A remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia centers on conspiracy theorist and beekeeper Teddy Gatz (Plemons). Teddy believes that aliens are preparing to invade Earth, and that they’re already among us, disguised as high-ranking humans.
One of the people Teddy believes to be an alien is Michelle Fuller, a CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. So he and a fellow conspiracy theorist (Aidan Delbis), kidnap her in the hopes of saving the world.
Get a taste of Bugonia in the full teaser trailer above, which promises more strangeness and dark comedy from Lanthimos, Stone, and Plemons. The film also stars Alicia Silverstone and Stavros Halkias.
Bugonia premieres in limited theaters Oct. 24, and has its wide release Oct. 31.
