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IN THE MOOD for a deeply weird, cursed fairy tale of film? Yorgos Lanthimos has got you covered with Poor Things. The famed Greek director — who’s previous work includes the Oscar-winning The FavouriteThe Lobster and the disturbing Dogtooth — is set to release his eighth feature length film, a “surrealist, sci-fi fantasy comedy-drama” that stars Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo.

The movie is set to premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and a trailer has already dropped setting up what looks to be a very odd tale.

Read on to watch the full trailer, and discover everything we know — including the quirky film’s Australian release date — below.

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What is Poor Things about?

After a runaway award success with 2018’s The Favourite, it seemed only natural that Lanthimos and Stone would work together again, so she signed up to work on his next film, and was announced to be joining the project back in early 2021.

Stone plays Bella, a strange, disjoined character that we learn is a sort of Franken-lady, brought back to life by the mysterious (and misshapen) Dr Godwin Baxter (Dafoe), who is credited as a scientist and her adoptive father. But a scientist of what, exactly, we ask, as we see some odd and highly questionable contraptions in his surgery — and what is Bella’s backstory?

It’s all part of an extremely gothic-looking set-up which has echoes of Sally in Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas — until slick lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo) turns up.

The official synopsis says that naive Bella is “eager to learn about the world around her”, and she runs off with Wedderburn to explore the world. Similar to another pink-clad woman trying to make her own way in the world in the cinema right now, Bella’s personal journey sees her demanding “equality and liberation”.

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What is Poor Things based on?

Poor Things is adapted from Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, which won the Whitbread Award (a British literary award that was taken over by The Costa Award after 2005). The book is set in the Victorian age, with Gray setting up the similar story of the mutilations and cut-and-paste human that is Bella by the Doctor as a “real” event, with historical documents to “back up” the story. It results in a story that was called​​ “magnificently brisk, funny, dirty and brainy” by the London Review of Books.

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Who stars in Poor Things?

Alongside our leads of Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things has a very varied cast list: Ramy Youssef (last seen in the criminally underrated Ramy), Christopher Abbot (Girls) Jerrod Carmichael (The Carmichael Show), Margaret Qualley (Maid), among others.

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When will Poor Things be released in Australia?

Originally, Poor Things was due to be released in the US on September 8, and in Australia on October 12, 2023. However, in light of the SAG-AFTRA strikes, the US release has been pushed to December 8 of this year. There hasn’t been word yet as to whether the Australian release has been pushed too, but stay tuned for updates.

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A version of this article originally appeared on Esquire UK.