After Winning An Oscar, Emma Stone Is Working With One Of Horror's Best Directors
All artists have phases within their careers, and while it's easy to demarcate what those phases are in hindsight, it can also be possible to see them emerging and mutating in real time. Emma Stone, an actress who began her journey as a comedy darling in films like "Superbad," "The House Bunny," and "Zombieland," soon found herself climbing to the A-list, nominated for an Academy Award for "Birdman" and winning Best Actress for "La La Land."
This past weekend, Stone won the Oscar for Best Actress for the second time, for her performance as Bella Baxter in "Poor Things." It's a win that seemingly signals a change in her career from a quirky ingenue to a complex and daring leading lady, especially when coupled with her other recent turn as Whitney Siegel in "The Curse."
Continuing that emerging trend, The Hollywood Reporter just announced that she'll be joining the cast of director Ari Aster's next film, a contemporary Western (or, as Aster has referred to it previously, a "Western-noir dark ensemble comedy") entitled "Eddington," which begins production this week. Aster, of course, is the filmmaker behind some of the most original and unsettling horror films of recent years, 2018's "Hereditary" and 2019's "Midsommar." Although Aster's most recent film, last year's astonishingly bold "Beau is Afraid," didn't connect with general audiences in the way his horror features did, Stone's presence within an impressively stacked cast could be just what Doctor Aster ordered to get people back on his weirdo groove.
Emma Stone and Ari Aster could bring out the best in each other
Despite the reception of "Beau is Afraid" being less than stellar upon its release last April, it's a film that has slowly gotten a little more respect in the months since, and could stand to become a hidden gem of a cult movie within the next few years. Whether Aster's peers feel the same about the movie or just harbor a love for his other films, "Beau" has had no adverse effect on "Eddington": not only is "Beau" star Joaquin Phoenix in the cast (which /Film previously reported), but he's joined by Stone, Pedro Pascal, and Austin Butler, a veritable who's who of who's hot in Hollywood right now. Once again, Aster's longtime producing partner A24 is on board to finance the picture.
As mentioned earlier, Aster has previously described "Eddington" in a fashion that belies the fact that his films don't fall into easy classification, and even though this movie has a deceptively simple premise of a small-town sheriff in New Mexico exhibiting high hopes and aspirations, it's a film that Aster's been trying to get off the ground since he started making movies. In other words, for us freaks who gorged ourselves on the gloriously insane "Beau is Afraid," it sounds like "Eddington" could be heading down a similar path of WTF-ery.
However, that need not be a warning signal to general audiences. After all, who would've thought that a movie like "Poor Things," directed by another avant-garde weirdo in Yorgos Lanthimos and starring America's sweetheart Stone as a Frankensteined liberated woman boning her way across a dayglo version of Victorian-era Europe, would be as well-received as it has? Stone's work is a huge part of that acceptance, her girl-next-door charm allowing audiences to feel comfortable before she hits the gas. With her and Aster teamed up on this Western-noir dark comedy, "Eddington" could be another milestone in both artists' beautifully bizarre careers.