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Emma Stone made her way back to Venice with Bugonia, her latest collaboration with Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos.
The last time they worked together, Stone won her second Oscar, playing an assertive and assured woman who saw the world with a childlike curiosity. In Poor Things, she starred as Bella, a woman born from a Frankenstein-like experiment with no preconceived thoughts or notions. It offered her a way to look past the men who only saw her as a way to serve their desires.
After this biting satire about misogyny and more, Lanthimos brings a dark comedy that revolves around some present-day anxieties. It shows two conspiracy theorists kidnapping a high-powered business executive, believing she is an alien. The BBC calls it a loose remake of the 2003 South Korean sci-fi film Save the Green Planet!, which followed a naive man abducting a man for similar reasons.
Bugonia is yet to be released in theaters, but the trailers, released by Focus Features, reveal a few insights into the characters played by Emma Stone and her co-star, Jesse Plemons. It doesn't give away all the details about the movie but hints at what these characters might be up to throughout its duration.
What role will Emma Stone play in Bugonia? Here's what we know so far
In Bugonia, Emma Stone plays Michelle Fuller, a high-powered CEO, while Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, a young man who holds her pharmaceutical company responsible for his personal crisis. He abducts her, thinking she is an alien on a mission to destroy the Earth. The BBC reports that the said personal tragedy is his mother's grave illness, other than the loss in the bee population.
The trailers introduced Plemons as a disillusioned beekeeper who seemingly draws parallels between the queen bee and Michelle, since the latter is also responsible for people in her ecosystem. The clips also showed Teddy's modest lifestyle as opposed to hers, where she seems to be in control of any given situation, while he loses a sense of control over his life.
Judging by the trailers, Emma Stone's character is an assertive and potentially domineering corporate boss, since she enters her corporate space without a shred of doubt about herself. She also appears on the cover of TIME and Forbes magazines, who deem her the Leader of the Year. Yet, in other shots, she sounds rather robotic and matter-of-fact, as she stoically asks her team to repeat her corporate message.
It might just be the dramatic hook behind the conspiracy of her being an alien. She may not show any signs of humanity, and that utter disregard might have fuelled Teddy and his friend, Don's (Aidan Delbis), conspiracy theories. Is she an alien or not? The trailers don't quite reveal that. However, based on some of the comments from Stone or Yorgos Lanthimos, the film may not be really about that question.
During a conversation after the Bugonia's Venice Film Festival premiere, Yorgos Lanthimos revealed how he envisioned the film and the real-life parallels he drew from. Per The Guardian, he said,
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it a dystopic film. If anything, this film says this is happening now. Humanity is facing a reckoning very soon. People need to choose the right path in many ways, otherwise I don’t know how much time we have – with technology, with AI, with wars, and [with] the denial of all these things, how desensitised we’ve become to them.”
In another interview, Emma Stone drew parallels between Bugonia and the case of Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter behind the death of a pharma CEO. She mentioned how the incident happened shortly after she wrapped the production on Bugonia. Speaking about her experience and the similarities, here's what she said, as per Variety:
“It was wild, because we had all just been in a basement [filming] together, talking about these issues and the bigger meaning of everything. It keeps hitting you that the world is so deeply fraught and terrifying in so many ways.”
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The film is slated to be theatrically released on October 24, 2025.
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