Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons to Star in New Yorgos Lanthimos Movie ‘Bugonia’

Emma Stone, Yorgos Lanthimos and Jesse Plemons in Cannes

Courtesy of Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

A day after his latest film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film has been announced. The director will helm Bugonia, starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, who lead his latest movie Kinds of Kindness.

The script from Will Tracy follows two conspiracy-obsessed men who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

Bugonia has been picked up by Focus Features for the U.S., with Universal Pictures distributing internationally. This sees Lanthimos leaving his recent home of Searchlight, which has released many of his films, including the Oscar winners Poor Things and The Favourtie as well as the upcoming Kinds of Kindness.

Bugonia is based on the 2003 South Korean sci-fi comedy, Save the Green Planet, with the English-language version developed by Miky Lee’s CJ ENM with Midsommar director Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen at Square Peg. 

Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe will produce for Element Pictures, along with Lanthimos, Aster, Knudsen, Stone, and Lee and Jerry Kyoungboum Ko for CJ ENM.

Stone, who also worked with Lanthimos on The Favourite and Poor Things, and Plemons both appear in Kinds of Kindness, out June 26, a film told in three parts. The Hollywood Reporter’s Cannes review reads: “You get a sense while watching that Lanthimos is reinvigorated by the opportunities of the tripartite structure and the chance to subvert the rules of both society and storytelling. It may not be as thematically cohesive on a first watch as some audiences will wish for, but the longer you mull it over, the more the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit and the common threads start to emerge.”