Exclusive: Yorgos Lanthimos to film Poor Things in Hungary with Emma Stone

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is in pre-production on his next feature, Poor Things, currently setting up at Origo Studios, Hungary. 

Adapted from the novel by Alasdair Grey, the film is from Element Pictures, Searchlight and Film4 and stars Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef and Willem Dafoe. Variety recently reported that Jerrod Carmichel has also joined the cast.

Lanthimos, who also produces alongside Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element, and Stone for her banner Fruit Tree, is calling the shots from a screenplay by Tony McNamara; the pair previously worked together on The Favourite, also starring Stone. 

Grey’s novel, first published in 1992, went on to win the Whitbread Novel Award and Guardian Fiction Prize later that year. Set in Victorian Glasgow, the  story, described as having echoes of Frankenstein, centres on Belle Baxter (played by Stone) who is brought back to life by an eccentric scientist (Dafoe). 

Lanthimos has worked with Element Pictures before – the Ireland/London-based company previously produced his English-language films The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, as well as The Favourite. 

Hungary is a well-established international production hub, with world-class studios, crew and locations. Budapest’s grand architecture easily doubles for other world cities, as with The Fear Index starring Josh Hartnett, currently using the capital to ‘play’ Geneva. 

Other productions to have shot there recently include The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with Nicolas Cage, Dune, Halo and The Last Kingdom. 

Hungary also offers an attractive 30% cash rebate to international film and TV productions, which can reach up to 37.5% when including rebate on foreign spend. For more on filming in Hungary, head over to our production guide. 

Emma Stone in The Favourite - image via Element Pictures/Searchlight.
Yorgos Lanthimos - image via Franco Origlia/Getty Images.