Even Yorgos Lanthimos is Burned Out on Yorgos Lanthimos Movies

We here at Den of Geek love Yorgos Lanthimos. We’ve praised the unique use of language in his breakout Dogtooth. We gave four and a half stars to his period piece The Favourite. Heck, even our two-star review of Kinds of Kindness showed respect for making something so off-putting. But there’s no question that Yorgos Lanthimos can be a lot, and after making Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and now Bugonia in the span of two years, even he’s burned out.

When asked by Collider about his breakneck output, the Greek filmmaker admitted that he “can’t keep doing that anymore,” and called his current pace “a big mistake.” He continued, laying out his plan for the foreseeable future.

“I’m going to take a little break,” he revealed. “I decide which film to make every time a script is ready, so when it is ready, and we’ve been working on something for such a long time, it just feels like a shame to just leave it there and wait. So, I kind of forced myself, almost, to try and find the time to do it immediately after I finished something. Like we shot Kinds of Kindness during that very long period of VFX on Poor Things, so I felt that I needed to do something during that time. Then, Bugonia, I had read three years before, and we worked with Will a little bit on the script, so it felt ready, and we just wanted to go out and make it. So, you find the will and the strength, but at some point, it runs out. We’re at that point.”

It’s easy to understand why Lanthimos would be so reluctant to slow down. He has been making features since 2001, and though he drew attention from English-speakers with his third film Dogtooth, reception to his work has been uneven at best. For every buzzy movie like Dogtooth, The Lobster, or Poor Things, there’s one that just hits the audience the wrong way, such as Alps or Kinds of Kindness.

Despite the wobbly reception to his work, Lanthimos has been able to attract A-level talent. He made The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer with Colin Farrell, adding Nicole Kidman to the latter, and had Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman, in an Oscar-winning performance, for The Favourite. Stone in particular seems like an idea collaborator for Lanthimos, fully willing to get weird in his movies while still grounding them in a type of humanity, something that Farrell and other big names haven’t been able to do.

In fact, in the same interview with Collider, Lanthimos revealed that it was Stone who came up with the idea of using Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” in the film. “It was a different song in the script, but when you start actually making the thing and actors enter into the equation, building their characters and all that, we started trying to find what would be appropriate for Michelle’s [Stone] character,” he explained. “So, I did some research in that area of music, which I sent to Emily [Stone’s preferred first name], and then she really loved Chappell Roan’s album. She was listening to it at the time, so she suggested the song.”

Clearly, Lanthimos and Stone have a rare chemistry. One hopes that it will be just as strong after the director comes out of his break. But if there’s one thing we know about Yorgos Lanthimos, it’s that he’ll always surprise us, and that’s what we love about him.

Bugonia comes to theaters nationwide on October 31, 2025.