Bald Moviegoers Get In Free to Emma Stone’s Bugonia
Only the bald get in free: Yorgos Lanthimos hosts a bald-only Los Angeles screening of Emma Stone’s Bugonia on October 20.
Yorgos Lanthimos is doing exactly what you think Yorgos Lanthimos would do: he’s throwing a bald-only screening for his new Emma Stone movie, Bugonia. Yes, this is real. Yes, it’s in Los Angeles. And yes, if you show up with hair, there’s a plan for that.
The bald screening, because of course
The one-night event is a marketing stunt, but it’s also kind of perfect for this movie’s vibe. Picture a crowd where Voldemort and The Rock would blend right in.
- When: Sunday, October 20
- Where: The Culver Theater (Los Angeles)
- Who gets in: Only bald attendees. If you have hair, a barber will be on-site starting at 6 p.m. to shave your head.
- Showtime: 8 p.m.
- Bonus chaos: Part of the event will be filmed.
- Host: DoLA
- Tickets: Free but limited, first-come first-served, and strictly 18+.
So what is Bugonia, exactly?
It’s the latest Lanthimos-Stone collaboration, their fourth after The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness. Stone plays a high-powered CEO at a pharmaceutical giant who gets kidnapped by two men convinced she’s an alien. Things escalate to the point where, in the back of a Range Rover, they shave her head to block her supposed alien powers and keep her from contacting her 'spaceship.' It’s extreme, unsettling, and very in line with the director’s taste for provocative, control-obsessed stories.
Couple quick facts: the movie runs about 2 hours, it’s currently sitting at roughly 90% on Rotten Tomatoes from early reactions, and it opens in the U.S. on October 31, 2025. Cast includes Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Stavros Halkias, and Aidan Delbis. Yorgos Lanthimos directs.
Yes, Emma Stone actually shaved her head
No wig. No CGI. The head shave you see in the film was done for real, in one take, inside that car. The point was to make it feel raw and inescapable, which also dovetails with the movie’s themes about control, fear, and identity. On screen, the look reads like her power is being stripped away while somehow making her feel even more formidable. It’s a bold swing, even by Lanthimos standards.
How Stone felt about it
Stone later described the day as emotional but ultimately freeing. Right before cameras rolled, she says she burst into tears in her trailer, thinking about her mom, Krista Stone, who had to shave her head years earlier during breast cancer treatment. Then she reframed it.
'She actually did something brave. I’m just shaving my head.'
Afterward, she said there was no better feeling than running her hands over the buzzed look, and joked that the first shower post-shave is unreal. For the scene, her co-stars used a 1.5-millimeter blade to finish the cut. And before she lost her own hair, she got to shave Yorgos Lanthimos’s head, which made the whole thing a little more fun and a lot less scary.
Bottom line
A bald-only screening for a movie where Emma Stone gets her head shaved in a single harrowing take? Hilarious, bizarre, and weirdly on-brand. If you’re in LA and feeling adventurous (or freshly shorn), you know where to be on October 20. Bugonia hits U.S. theaters October 31, 2025.