At just 35, Emma Stone now has two best-actress Oscars—and maybe a third isn’t that far off either. Less than a week after her wonderfully emotional acceptance speech at the 96th Academy Awards, it was confirmed that the Hollywood heavyweight would be reuniting with Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos for his next film, Kinds of Kindness. Even better news? It’ll be hurtling to screens this summer following its Cannes premiere, and three bonkers trailers have already landed.
Stone and Lanthimos, who previously collaborated on the madcap 2018 period drama The Favourite and the mind-bending 2022 short Bleat, are joined by a thrillingly starry ensemble: Hunter Schafer, Joe Alwyn, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons (who picked up the best-actor prize at Cannes for his performance), and Mamoudou Athie.
Labeled a sci-fi anthology film, the forthcoming release’s log line describes it as a “triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing at sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.” It was penned by Lanthimos and his frequent collaborator Efthimis Filippou, and given their previous track record—Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer—as well as the delightfully strange early images that emerged from the set when filming took place in New Orleans in 2022, it promises to be another head-spinningly surreal tale from the audacious Greek auteur.
Lanthimos was characteristically enigmatic when speaking about it at a BFI event back in January, saying: “We’ve just shot this film… a contemporary film. It’s three different stories, and we’re finishing the edit right now, and I still can’t tell you exactly what it is about. But I also wouldn’t want to tell you what I thought the stories are about because it just makes it so small. I try not to even think about it during the process, because I’m afraid that it will make my choices more narrow.”
We’re certainly intrigued. Look out for it in cinemas from June 21.