Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia gets release date with distributor twist.
After starring in The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness, Emma Stone has set her fourth movie collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos: Bugonia.
Focus Features announced that they have slated Lanthimos’ Bugonia for a November 7, 2025 release date — it will receive a wide theatrical release and stars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.
Bugonia is based on a South Korean sci-fi movie Save the Green Planet. Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen of Square Peg developed the adaptation. Will Tracy (The Menu, Succession) will write the script that Lanthimos will direct.
Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element Pictures will produce the movie as well. Lanthimos, Aster, Knudsen, Stone (via Fruit Tree), and Miky Lee and Jerry Kyoungboum Ko of CJ ENM also serve as producers.
While Focus Features will handle the U.S. distribution, Universal Pictures will handle all international markets except Korea.
This is a big movement for Lanthimos and his career. His last three movies, which all starred Stone, were distributed by Searchlight Pictures.
Per Focus Features’ announcement, Bugonia “follows two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.”
Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos movies
For she collaborated with Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone has received three Oscar nominations (two as an actress and one as a producer). Her performance in The Favourite landed her a Best Supporting Actress nomination. She won Best Actress for her role in Poor Things, her second career Best Actress win.
Additionally, Lanthimos is a six-time Oscar nominee. His first nomination was for Best Foreign Language Film for Dogtooth. The Lobster received a Best Original Screenplay nomination. Both The Favourite and Poor Things landed Lanthimos Best Picture and Best Director nominations as well.
The relationship works. Just months after Stone won for Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness was released. The movie featured Stone and Jesse Plemons and is made up of three anthology stories.
Emma Stone’s career
Even before her collaborations with Lanthimos, Stone was an accomplished actress. She got her start starring in comedies such as Superbad and Zombieland. From there, she gained more recognition for starring in Easy A, Friends with Benefits, Crazy, Stupid, Love, and The Help.
In 2012, Stone made her foray into the superhero genre. She starred in The Amazing Spider-Man directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield.
A couple of years later, Stone starred in Birdman with Michael Keaton. She landed her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the movie.
Since then, Stone has starred in La La Land, The Croods: A New Age, and Cruella. Coming up, she will star in Ari Aster’s Eddington. The movie also features Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, and Austin Butler.
Additionally, Stone has made her way to the small screen. She recently starred in The Curse which was created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie.
As a producer, Stone has produced acclaimed movies such as I Saw the TV Glow and A Real Pain. The former was recently released by A24 after its Sundance premiere. A Real Pain also premiered at Sundance and will be released in the fall by Searchlight Pictures.
