BUGONIA Launches In-Universe Conspiracy Stunt With New Website & Billboards

Ahead of its Halloween release date, Yorgos Lanthimos’s newest film is stirring up some real world conspiracy stunts. Today, an in-universe conspiracy website was launched for Bugonia, featuring a low-fi aesthetic loaded with Easter eggs for the upcoming film, which stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, and Alicia Silverstone. 

The website — titled Human Resistance HQ — brings to mind the low-tech websites of the ‘90s, centered on the film’s conspiracy theorist protagonists and their belief that the CEO of a major company is an alien intent on destroying Earth. 

The website’s tabs include “Suspected Andromedans,” which features a deep dive into Stone’s CEO character Michelle Fuller, in-universe media clips, and a real LinkedIn page for the film’s fictional company Auxolith; “Research & Findings,” which pulls up a collection of articles and files tied directly back to the plot of Bugonia; and “Suspected Mothership Viewings,” which features coded messages that gives fans coordinates and times for early fan screenings in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston on October 20.  

Also launched today are two real-world billboards for Auxolith, featuring Stone’s Michelle Fuller advertising Auxolith’s pharmaceutical products, with a slogan reading “Healing Tomorrow, Today.” Located in both New York City and Los Angeles, the billboards have been “vandalized” with phrases that read “Andromedon Filth” and “Join the Human Resistance.” 

Bugonia serves as an English language remake of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet!, directed by Jang Joon-hwan and starring Shin Ha-kyun. The film is produced by Ari Aster, Lanthimos, Stone, Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Miky Lee, Jerry Kyoungboum Ko, and Lars Knudsen, and marks Stone’s fourth collaboration with Lanthimos, after working on The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness. 

Bugonia hits theaters on October 31.