Focus Features announced today that Bugonia, the latest film from Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos, has been bumped from its November release date in favor of Halloween.
Bugonia will receive a special limited engagement on October 24, ahead of a wide expansion theatrically on October 31, 2025. Bugonia was initially slated for November 7 release.
The weeklong cinematic event will feature screenings of the film, which was shot in VistaVision, at select locations in New York and Los Angeles.
The film follows “two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced she is an alien intent on destroying Planet Earth.”
While that may sound more conspiracy thriller, Bugonia is an English-language remake of 2003’s Korean genre-bender Save the Green Planet!, an off-beat, black comedy-sci-fi mashup written and directed by Jang Joon-Hwan. It’s full of shocking moments and unexpected twists, but it’s also a darkly funny movie that suits Lanthimos’ style well.
Emma Stone (Poor Things), Jesse Plemons (Civil War, Antlers), Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias (Let’s Start a Cult), and Alicia Silverstone (The Lodge) star in Bugonia. Lanthimos directs from a screenplay by Will Tracy (The Menu).
Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) produces along with Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Miky Lee, Jerry Kyoungboum Ko, Lanthimos, Stone, and Lars Knudsen.
Producers Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen previously said in a statement, “Swinging with youthful abandon between white-knuckle suspense, absurd slapstick, grim horror and a deeply felt (and earned) sense of tragedy, Save The Green Planet! is one of the most remarkable films to come out of South Korea – among this recent wave or any wave, for that matter. When we heard that director Jang was passionate about revisiting this iconic work, bringing it to the US and updating it to reflect the mess of the world today (which feels even more ripe for this kind of apocalyptic skewering than when the film was first released), we leapt at the chance to be a part of it. We’re honored to be partnering with CJ and with the brilliant director Jang.”