Searchlight is wasting no time getting the next Yorgos Lanthimos film out there.
Less than a week after “Poor Things” won four Academy Awards include Best Actress for Emma Stone, distributor Searchlight Pictures has announced the release date for his next film, “Kinds of Kindness“: It will open in theaters June 21, 2024. A limited release will kick off the launch for Lanthimos’ eighth feature film, with a wider nationwide opening to follow.
The June 21 release almost certainly means that “Kinds of Kindness” will be ready for Cannes 2024 — and will potentially be his first feature to premiere on the Croisette since 2017’s “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” His past Oscar winners “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” both went the way of Venice. The 2024 Cannes Film Festival runs May 14 through May 25.
“Kinds of Kindness” is an anthology film with three separate storylines that collide, though plot details remain scarce so far. The cast reunites Lanthimos with his “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” star Stone — and in a contemporary setting this time — plus “Poor Things” stars Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley. Joining the Lanthimos troupe are Jesse Plemons, Hunter Schafer, Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau, and Mamoudou Athie.
“Kinds of Kindness” shot quietly in New Orleans back in fall 2022 while “Poor Things” was in post-production, readying for the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion in September 2023.
“It’s a contemporary film, set in the U.S. — 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,” Lanthimos said in a recent Guardian interview. “It’s all shot and we have started editing.”
Lanthimos wrote “Kinds of Kindness” with Efthimis Filippou, co-writer on “Dogtooth,” “The Lobster” (which earned him and Lanthimos a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination), “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” and “Alps.”
The film is produced by Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element, along with Kasia Malipan and writer-director Lanthimos. This is the fifth project between Lanthimos, Guiney, and Lowe. Ollie Madden and Daniel Battsek are executive producing for Film4, which co-financed the project.
