Emma Stone And Yorgos Lanthimos' Next Film Has Been Revealed
The planet might be on fire, but at least Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos have found one another. The "La La Land" actor and "The Lobster" filmmaker didn't exactly read as an obvious pairing, yet they're already on their way to joining Hepburn-Cukor, Stewart-Hitchcock, and De Niro-Scorsese in the ranks of all-time great actor-director duos. After a couple of feature films ("The Favourite" and "Poor Things") and a short ("Bleat"), the one thing we can say for certain is that we'll never know precisely what these two are going to get up to next.
Speaking of which, we're only days removed from Stone's surprise Best Actress Oscar win for "Poor Things," yet we've already got a release date for her next collaboration with Lanthimos. The duo will return in just a few months with "Kinds of Kindness," a film that they shot back in late 2022 which was previously going by the (impressively SEO-unfriendly) title "And." And based on what little we know about the movie so far, it already sounds incredibly exciting. Even better, you'll only have a few months to wait until it arrives, now that Searchlight Pictures (which also backed "The Favourite" and "Poor Things") has penciled the film in for an early summer release date. That's right — forget the fall or winter, Lanthimos movies come out in the middle of the biggest blockbuster season now, baby.
Stone and Lanthimos are keeping things weird with Kinds of Kindness
So, what is "Kinds of Kindness" about? Great question! Mercifully, Lanthimos is keeping things close to the vest for the time being, simply describing it to The Guardian as "a contemporary film, set in the U.S. — three different stories, with four or five actors who play one part in each story, so they all play three different parts. It was almost like making three films, really." Among those joining Stone in the cast are her "Poor Things" co-stars Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, along with Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau, Jesse Plemons, Mamoudou Athie, and "Euphoria" starlet Hunter Schafer.
Anthology films like "Kinds of Kindness" can, admittedly, be a mixed blessing. While there are plenty of good ones (Wes Anderson's "The French Dispatch" being a recent example), their segments can also vary greatly in quality. On the plus side, that also means that if one particular chapter isn't your cup of tea, you may yet enjoy the film as a whole, assuming the other stories work better for you. Furthermore, "Kinds of Kindness" marks the first feature film Lanthimos has co-written with his frequent collaborator Efthimis Filippou since "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," so it may end up being a tad more polarizing than his last two efforts with Stone and writer Tony McNamara. Then again, if this film gives Stone her answer to Barry Keoghan sloppily stuffing his face with spaghetti, then it'll be totally worth it.
"Kinds of Kindness" will unveil its weirdness in theaters on June 21, 2024.