Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos have cemented themselves as one of modern film’s dynamic duos.
The pair first teamed up on 2018’s period piece The Favourite, which earned Stone an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and Lanthimos a nomination for Best Director. They continued their collaboration with 2023’s fantasy fable Poor Things, for which Stone won her second Oscar for Best Actress, and for which Lanthimos received his second nomination for Best Director. Stone and Lanthimos also re-joined forces for 2022’s short film Bleat, and for 2024’s anthology film Kinds of Kindness.
Now, Stone and Lanthimos return for their fourth feature together: Bugonia. Directed by Lanthimos and written by Will Tracy (The Menu), the film remakes the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet! It also reunites Stone and Lanthimos with Kinds of Kindness‘ Jesse Plemons, who earned the Best Actor Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival for his performance across the film’s three dark tales.
In Bugonia, Stone stars as Michelle Fuller, the high-powered CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. Plemons plays beekeeper and conspiracy theorist Teddy, who, along with his cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis), kidnaps Michelle and locks her in his basement. There, he tries to get Michelle to confess that she’s an alien and that she’s been puppeteering humanity from her CEO position.
Bugonia premiered at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, where it received mostly positive reviews for Lanthimos’ nihilistic commentary on the modern moment and for Stone and Plemons’ performance.
Watch the full trailer for Bugonia above to witness more of Plemons’ madcap interrogation of Stone, and for snippets of Stone lip syncing her heart out to Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”
Bugonia hits select theaters Oct. 24, then releases wide Oct. 31.
