'Bugonia' Made The Decision To Gender Swap Emma Stone’s Character, And The Filmmaker’s Reasons Are Fascinating

Bugonia marks the fourth feature that Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos have made together… but that’s only because of a vital change that was made during the film’s development. The 2025 movie is a remake of the 2003’s Save The Green Planet! from Korean filmmaker Jang Joon-hwan, and among the deviations from the original is a gender-swapped antagonist – which is the character played by Stone. It’s a fascinating choice that ends up having significant consequences on the storytelling, and it was one the filmmakers opted to make for a multitude of reasons. In the film, a pair of conspiracy theorists (Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis) execute a plan to kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO (Stone) whom they believe is an alien in disguise. The fact that it’s two men abducting a woman impacts both the relationships between the characters and external perspectives on the circumstance – meaning that sexual dynamics are in play, and the door is open for the conversation about misogyny that’s frequently mixed into conspiracy thinking in the modern age. I brought this up while virtually interviewing screenwriter Will Tracy and Yorgos Lanthimos earlier this month during the Bugonia press day, noting the fact that the male leads decide to chemically castrate themselves, and Tracy discussed the impact of the gender swap.