True crime fans who have been begging Dave Franco to star in a biopic about Luigi Mangione – the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson – may be sated by Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film “Bugonia.”
Emma Stone, Lanthimos’ most decorated collaborator and a producer on the new movie, said she found “terrifying” parallels between the Mangione case and the central plot of “Bugonia.” The Oscar winner revealed on Saturday at the Telluride Film Festival that Thompson was gunned down and Mangione was captured just after her movie wrapped production in 2024.
In “Bugonia,” Stone plays a ruthless high-powered medical company CEO who is kidnapped by a low-level employee (Jesse Plemons). So convinced that Stone is an alien from the Andromeda galaxy sent to dismantle humanity, the conspiracy-obsessed employee holds his CEO captive and bone-breaking torture ensues. We’ll spare major spoilers for the highly praised movie, except to say that Stone is right to connect those dots (especially in how the story compares to Mangione’s own sentiments about how healthcare companies have failed families).
“What’s really crazy, after we had shot the film – I live in New York – we heard someone was shot up the street. It was a healthcare CEO. You know, because Luigi. You guys heard about this?” Stone said during a Q&A following the Telluride premiere.
“It was wild, because we had all just been in a basement [filming] together talking about these issues and the bigger meaning of everything. It keeps hitting you that the world is so deeply fraught and terrifying in so many ways,” Stone concluded.
More to come…
