Emma Stone Reunites With Poor Things Director Yorgos Lanthimos For Kinds of Kindness

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 have teamed up again for Kinds of Kindness, an anthology film set in contemporary times. This marks 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?

Per a description, Kinds of Kindness is a “triptych fable with segments following a man without choice who tries to take control of his life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing at sea has returned and seems to be a different person; and a woman who is determined to find a specific someone destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.”

Lanthimos recently told the Guardian, “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.”

Originally titled And, the film wrapped 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 stars 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).

Is there a Kinds of Kindness trailer?

Two teasers have been released for the film so far. In the first, released March 27, Stone narrates, “This is it. The moment of truth,” as she speeds down an empty street in a purple sports car. The Eurythmics’s classic “Sweet Dreams” kicks in, as a scene with each cast member blinkers on the screen. In classic Yorgos fashion, there are both black-and-white frames and a kaleidoscope of settings. Watch below:

In the second teaser, released April 11, Stone dances in a parking lot (while a woman nods off in a wheelchair next to her) to Cobra’s “Brand New Bitch.” The rest of the clip flashes on each character doing something quirky in quick succession:

Is there a Kinds of Kindness release date?

Kinds of Kindness will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival at the end of May. Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures has confirmed that the film will be released theatrically on June 21, 2024, before likely hitting streamers.