VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Why Peacock Paid Big For Bugonia When It Already Flopped In Theaters

Bugonia earned just $39 million worldwide against a production budget between $45 and $55 million. By any traditional metric, the film was a theatrical disappointment. Yet on December 26, NBCUniversal's Peacock proudly launched the Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons thriller as one of its marquee holiday releases. The question isn't whether Peacock made a mistake. It's whether the rest of us understand the new economics of streaming well enough to recognize why this was actually a smart move. The answer reveals how drastically the film industry has transformed, where box office failure and streaming success operate on completely different valuation systems.

Why Peacock Paid Big For Bugonia When It Already Flopped In Theaters by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Emma Stone And Jesse Plemons Are On The Bubble For Oscar Nods: Here's Why They Deserve To Get In

The 2026 Oscar race is heating up, and two of the year's most electrifying performances are stuck in nomination purgatory. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, both Golden Globe nominees for their work in Bugonia, find themselves on what awards pundits call "the bubble." They're close enough to taste it, but not quite locked in. This is frustrating because both actors deliver career-defining work in Yorgos Lanthimos's confrontational thriller. And I mean genuinely career-defining, not the hyperbolic kind of praise that gets thrown around every awards season. Stone plays Michelle Fuller, a pharmaceutical CEO kidnapped by conspiracy theorists who believe she's an alien.

Emma Stone And Jesse Plemons Are On The Bubble For Oscar Nods: Here's Why They Deserve To Get In by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Bugonia Asks The Question We're All Afraid To Answer: What If The Conspiracy Theorists Are Right?

The most disturbing thing about Bugonia isn't the violence, the body horror, or even the shocking ending. It's how uncomfortably plausible the conspiracy theory at its center actually feels. Yorgos Lanthimos's latest provocation, now streaming on Peacock, forces viewers into a moral and epistemological trap with no clear exit. By the time the credits roll, you're left wondering not just what you believe, but whether belief itself still means anything in a world where both corporate malfeasance and paranoid delusion feel equally credible. This is intentional, calculated, and deeply unsettling. Bugonia doesn't ask you to pick a side. It asks you to recognize that both sides might be catastrophically correct about each other.

Bugonia Asks The Question We're All Afraid To Answer: What If The Conspiracy Theorists Are Right? by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Bugonia's Ending Is Either Brilliant Or A Total Cop-Out And Here's Why Both Views Are Valid

The final ten minutes of Bugonia have sparked one of the year's most heated cinematic debates. After spending two hours trapped in a basement with conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz and kidnapped CEO Michelle Fuller, the film reveals that yes, Michelle really is an alien from Andromeda. She boards her mothership, determines humanity has failed, and casually erases nine billion people with the emotional weight of closing a browser tab. The world stops. Bodies drop where they stood. The bees return to their hives. Some viewers call it genius. Others consider it a betrayal. Both camps are onto something important, and the divide reveals more about us than the film itself.

Bugonia's Ending Is Either Brilliant Or A Total Cop-Out And Here's Why Both Views Are Valid by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Why Bugonia's Portrait Of Corporate Evil Feels More Terrifying Than Any Horror Movie

Horror movies give us monsters we can recognize. Demons have red eyes. Vampires drink blood. Killers wear masks and wield knives. But what happens when the real monster wears a tailored suit, speaks in soothing corporate platitudes, and destroys lives through spreadsheets instead of violence? That's the question at the heart of Bugonia, now streaming on Peacock, and the answer is more unsettling than any creature feature could ever be. Emma Stone's Michelle Fuller, CEO of pharmaceutical giant Auxolith, represents a villain far more chilling than Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger. She embodies systemic evil, the kind that operates within the law, hides behind quarterly earnings reports, and leaves body counts that dwarf any slasher franchise while never personally wielding a weapon. And here's what makes her truly terrifying: she genuinely believes she's done nothing wrong.

Why Bugonia's Portrait Of Corporate Evil Feels More Terrifying Than Any Horror Movie by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Bugonia Understands Conspiracy Theories Better Than Any Documentary Ever Could

Documentaries about conspiracy theories have a fundamental problem. They approach their subjects from the outside, with clinical distance and journalistic objectivity. They interview believers, analyze the psychology, trace the origins, and ultimately explain why these theories are wrong. This creates a comfortable barrier between viewer and subject. You're safely positioned as the rational observer watching people lose their grip on reality. Bugonia, now streaming on Peacock, takes the opposite approach. Yorgos Lanthimos's darkly comic thriller doesn't explain conspiracy thinking. It traps you inside it, forcing you to experience the paranoia, desperation, and twisted logic from within. The result is the most accurate and unsettling portrait of conspiracy culture in American cinema.

Bugonia Understands Conspiracy Theories Better Than Any Documentary Ever Could by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Jesse Plemons Is Hollywood's Most Underrated Character Actor And Bugonia Proves It

There's a moment in Bugonia where Jesse Plemons sits across from Emma Stone's kidnapped CEO, his face barely moving, his voice eerily calm as he explains why he believes she's an alien plotting humanity's destruction. It's the kind of scene that would invite scenery-chewing from most actors. Plemons does the opposite. He makes terror feel mundane, delusion feel rational, and violence feel inevitable through sheer restraint. This is what Jesse Plemons does better than almost anyone working today. He disappears into characters who should be cartoons and makes them feel uncomfortably real. Yet despite an Oscar nomination, three Emmy nods, a Cannes Best Actor win, and collaborations with Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jane Campion, and Yorgos Lanthimos, Plemons remains oddly undervalued. He's the actor everyone in Hollywood wants to work with, but the general public still struggles to name.

Jesse Plemons Is Hollywood's Most Underrated Character Actor And Bugonia Proves It by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

How Bugonia Proves Emma Stone's Done Playing It Safe

Emma Stone shaving her head to play a kidnapped CEO suspected of being an alien isn't just another role. It's a statement. With Bugonia now streaming on Peacock, Stone has completed her transformation from America's sweetheart into one of Hollywood's most fearless performers. The journey from Easy A's charming high schooler to this bald, terrified pharmaceutical executive reveals an artist systematically dismantling the safety nets that made her famous. This isn't accidental. Stone has methodically constructed a career that refuses comfort, and her four-film collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos represents the culmination of that strategy.

How Bugonia Proves Emma Stone's Done Playing It Safe by VictoriaScott

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entertainment

1mo ago

Why Critics Are Calling Bugonia The Most Important Film Of This Year

The holidays just got significantly more unsettling. Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone's latest collaboration, Bugonia, arrived on Peacock on December 26, bringing one of 2025's most provocative films directly to your living room. This isn't just another streaming drop. It's a disorienting plunge into conspiracy theories, corporate greed, and the question of what happens when paranoia meets power. While blockbusters like Avatar: Fire and Ash dominated conversations, Bugonia quietly carved out its own territory as a deeply unconventional psychological thriller. The film operates at the intersection of dark comedy, science fiction, and social commentary without ever settling comfortably into any single category.

Why Critics Are Calling Bugonia The Most Important Film Of This Year by VictoriaScott

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relationships

1mo ago

What Nobody Tells You About Losing Someone You Thought Was Forever

Research shows it takes an average of 11 weeks to start feeling significantly better after a breakup. For divorces, that number jumps to 17 months. But here's what the studies don't capture. You can technically "get over" someone while still carrying pieces of them forever. The timeline is just when the pain stops being unbearable, not when they stop mattering. I've lost love. The kind that felt permanent, inevitable, written in the stars or whatever romantic garbage we tell ourselves to justify staying when we should leave. And the hardest lesson wasn't about moving on. It was learning that someone else's love was never mine to lose in the first place.

What Nobody Tells You About Losing Someone You Thought Was Forever by VictoriaScott

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relationships

1mo ago

The Relationship Skills Nobody Teaches You Until It's Too Late

About 41% of first marriages end in divorce. That number jumps to 60% for second marriages and 73% for third marriages. The leading cause isn't infidelity or falling out of love. It's lack of commitment, cited by 75% of divorcing couples. Communication breakdown follows close behind. These statistics tell us something uncomfortable. Most people enter relationships without the emotional skills needed to maintain them. We learn algebra and history in school but nothing about how to actually sustain a partnership with another human being. Then we act surprised when relationships collapse under pressure.

The Relationship Skills Nobody Teaches You Until It's Too Late by VictoriaScott

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