Poor Things: Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone team for female Frankenstein story

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Emma Stone earned an Oscar nomination for her role in director Yorgos Lanthimos's film The Favourite, and now she's set to work with Lanthimos again on the film Poor Things. In this one, Stone will be playing a character named Bella Baxter – who is described as being "a volatile, oversexed, emancipated woman and a female Frankenstein". And that's how Poor Things has caught our attention here.

According to Production Weekly, Bella is called a "female Frankenstein" because 

after drowning herself to escape her abusive husband, Bella's brain is replaced by that of her unborn child.

… So Stone is going to be playing a woman with the mind of an unborn child. I have to know more about this story. Luckily, Poor Things is based on a novel by Alasdair Gray, so the book description provides a little more information.

Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter – a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.

Judging by reader reviews, it sounds like Poor Things is an incredibly weird book – which makes Lanthimos the perfect filmmaker to bring it to the screen, because he has worked with some incredibly weird subject matter before.

Lanthimos and Tony McNamara are writing the screenplay for Poor Things, which is set up at Searchlight Pictures. The project is aiming for a fall 2021 production start.