Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things may be reaching the peak of its popularity in this streaming stretch post Oscars night, but the next work of lunacy from the director (and a re-team with Emma Stone) already has a release date. Not only that, it’s closer than most anyone may have guessed. We had presumed there may have been an outside chance it would come out by the end of the year. Instead, Kinds of Kindness is slated for a June 21^st release, per Searchlight Pictures. Co-starring alongside now twice-minted Oscar winner Emma Stone are Willem Dafoe (who can also be seen in Poor Things), Jesse Plemons (now in theatres with Alex Garland’s Civil War), Margaret Qualley (Drive Away Dolls), Hong Chau (The Whale), Joe Alwyn (The Favourite), Mamoudou Athie (Archive 81) and Hunter Schafer (though the Euphoria star has labelled her role a ‘little cameo’).

Kinds of Kindness, no doubt titled with a twisted irony (and once called simply And), is suspected to be an anthology following Lanthimos’ description of “a contemporary film, set in the US – three different stories, with four or five actors who play one part in each story”. Those stories have been co-written by Efthimis Filippou, Lanthimos’ partner in crime on Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a trio of notably bleak outings.

And in case you were concerned Emma Stone would only be working on Yorgos projects for the rest of her foreseeable career, we have some good news. If you didn’t take well to the 3-hour panic-attack that was Beau is Afraid, the news isn’t quite as good. Filming seems to be underway on Ari Aster’s latest, per an on-location photograph posted to Instagram, featuring dusty New Mexico plains and a fresh clapperboard emblazoned Eddington. Production details and the plot are being kept thoroughly under wraps, but the title of this “contemporary western” (seems all that time with a post-Killers of the Flower Moon Martin Scorsese has rubbed off), is perhaps taken from its purported small-time sheriff lead character. Working in a new genre (though one he’d originally eyed for his directorial debut), Aster continues to expand from the horror-niche his first two features threatened to pigeonhole him into, though if Beau is Afraid is anything to go off of (as unpredictable as that film was), we can still expect a pretty disconcerting time at the movies. As of now, joining Stone in the cast are Joaquin Phoenix (of the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux), Pedro Pascal (in everything these days), Austin Butler (currently gurgling a new accent in Dune Part Two), Luke Grimes (American Sniper), Deirdre O’Connell (Tony winner for Dana H), Micheal Ward (The Old Guard) and Clifton Collins Jr. (in cinemas in The Bricklayer).

And in news that’s about as far off from those auteur madmen as we can get, Warner Bros.’ planned The Cat in the Hat adaptation now has a rough release date and a star-studded cast to beef up the announcement. On the casting call are Bill Hader (Barry), Quinta Brunson (catapulted to the big leagues by her work on Abbot Elementary), Bowen Yang (one of Saturday Night Live’s newer finds), Paula Pell (longstanding writer for SNL), Matt Berry (What We Do in the Shadows) and Xochitl Gomez (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). Curiously, Hader has previously played the titular Cat in the Hat for SNL, running into a spurned ex-lover named Linda, in probably one of the best remembered bits of his prized tenure.

The project will be headed by a directing duo of Alessandro Carloni (Kung Fu Panda 3) and Erica Rivinoja (Academy Award nominee for her writing on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan). Warners, as part of their newly relaunched focus on animated output (let’s not think too long on the ill-fated Coyote VS. Acme, shelved for tax reasons), will partner with DNEG Animation, currently at work on another family-friendly-feline-film; Garfield. Curiously, this will be the first animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ classic kids’ book to be released in theatres. We can speculate that Warners’, hoping to set the stage for a whole cycle of Seuss adaptations, will produce a better product than Mike Myers’ 2003 fever dream, but will it be nearly as interesting?