Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s "Bugonia" Gets New Release Date

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and Oscar winner Emma Stone's project “Bugonia" will premiere ahead of schedule.

The film will open in select theaters on October 24 before expanding nationwide on October 31. That’s slightly earlier than the original release date of November 7.

Focus Features is rolling out “Bugonia” in the U.S. and Canada while Universal Pictures, the specialty studio’s parent company, will handle international distribution.

“Bugonia,” a remake of the South Korean sci-fi comedy “Save the Green Planet,” revolves around two conspiracy-obsessed friends who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major corporation because they are convinced she’s an alien intent on destroying Earth.

Jesse Plemons, who worked with Stone and Lanthimos on “Kinds of Kindness,” also leads the cast alongside Alicia Silverstone, Aidan Delbis, and Stavros Halkias.

Lanthimos is directing from a script by Will Tracy, whose credits include “The Menu” and “Succession.”

Stone and Lanthimos were producers — via their respective companies Fruit Tree and Pith — in their latest team-up following “Poor Things,” “The Favourite” and “Kinds of Kindness.”

Producers also include Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element Pictures, Ari Aster and Lars Knusden of Square Peg, and Miky Lee and Jerry Kyoungboum Ko of CJ ENM.

Focus Features won a bidding war for “Bugonia,” a departure for Lanthimos after Searchlight distributed his prior three films, 2018’s “The Favourite,” 2023’s “Poor Things” and 2024’s “Kinds of Kindness.” A24 distribution the two prior to that, 2015’s “The Lobster” and 2017’s “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.”