After taking home the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, Emma Stone has found her next leading role—and the film will be out in just a few months. Stone and Lanthimos teamed up once again for Kinds of Kindness, an anthology film set in contemporary times, marking the creative duo’s third feature together (including 2018’s highly-celebrated film, The Favourite).
Poor Things surpassed $100 million worldwide and won four Academy Awards (with eleven nominations), including production and costume design. Stone’s performance as the Frankenstein-esque, Victorian woman Bella, a character whom Stone described as living in a world without shame, has been heralded by critics as her career best. “There is absolutely nothing that Emma cannot do,” Lanthimos told W last fall. “She is fearless.”
Stone has similarly gushed about the Greek director, and recently reflected on her partnership with him, telling Variety, “Yorgos feels like a lot of his process of working with people or putting people in his films has to do with who they are as a person. It’s not just performance-based.”
The pair already have another project lined up—a remake of the South Korean fantasy comedy Save the Green Planet. In the meantime, here’s everything to know about Kinds of Kindness:
What is Kinds of Kindness about?
There isn’t much known yet about the Kinds of Kindness plot, but we do have a few key details that give us some idea of what to expect. Lanthimos recently told the Guardian, “It’s all shot and we have started editing. It’s a contemporary film, set in the US—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.”
The film, originally titled And, reportedly wrapped filming in late 2022 in New Orleans. Lanthimos wrote the screenplay with collaborator Efthimis Filippou, with whom he co-wrote The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and Dogtooth.
Who is in the Kinds of Kindness cast?
Stone will be starring in the film, with Lanthimos saying, “It’s great to be working again with Emma. It makes it so much easier to have someone there who trusts you so much, and who you trust so much.”
Aside from Poor Things, Stone is best known for her Oscar-winning turn in 2016’s La La Land. Most recently, she starred alongside Nathan Fielder in Benny Safdie’s surreal HBO drama The Curse, and will also star in Ari Aster’s forthcoming Eddington. She also started a production company, Fruit Tree, with her husband Dave McCary, which produced 2024 Sundance standouts I Saw the TV Glow and Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial feature, A Real Pain (Stone was also a producer on Poor Things).
Otherwise, Lanthimos has cast a few of his recurring ensemble players—including Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, both of whom were in Poor Things. Joe Alwyn, who was in The Favourite, will also be in Kinds of Kindness. Additionally, the cast will include Jesse Plemons (Killers of the Flower Moon), Hong Chau (The Whale), Mamoudou Athie (Elemental), and Hunter Schafer (Euphoria).
Stone as Bella Baxter in Poor Things.
Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Is there a Kinds of Kindness release date?
Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures has confirmed that the film will be released on June 21, 2024. It will likely have a theatrical release before hitting streamers, as was the case with Poor Things.
