The Big Picture

Hulu is releasing
Poor Things
on March 7 ahead of the Oscars, where it’s up for 11 awards.
The film follows Bella Baxter on a whimsical journey of discovery in a steampunk Europe setting.
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone have a successful collaboration with plans for a new project together.

Ahead of the Oscars on March 10, Hulu is bringing Poor Things home on March 7, so everyone can catch up on the absurd adventures of Bella Baxter. The bizarrely comedic Frankenstein story from director Yorgos Lanthimos and Disney’s Searchlight is up for 11 Academy Awards this year, including Best Actress for Emma Stone and Best Picture. Set in a whimsical, steampunk depiction of Europe and based on the novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray, the film follows Bella on a journey of discovery throughout the continent as she grows up and searches for liberation.

In Poor Things, Bella is a young woman resurrected and taken in by the mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who instills in her a hunger to learn and see the world. With the mind of the infant she carried now inside her, she has plenty to learn about how everything works. When she gets the opportunity to go on an adventure with the lecherous lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), she jumps at the chance to see the pains and the pleasures of the world beyond her home. Her many encounters instill in her a sense of purpose as she makes a stand for equality and forges her own destiny.

The streaming release date news comes just a day after Poor Things was released on VOD and after the film crossed a significant milestone at the global box office. Lanthimos’s latest secured a long stay in theaters and, in that time, it has grossed over $100 million USD worldwide, making it the biggest financial success of the director’s career ahead of another Stone-headed film, The Favourite. Stone served as a producer on Poor Things and shared the screen with a fantastic cast including Dafoe, Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Suzy Bemba, Vicki Pepperdine, and Hanna Schygulla.

‘Poor Things’ Isn’t Lanthimos’s Last Collaboration With Stone

Following the success of his R-rated adaptation, Lanthimos has already secured his next team-up with Stone – Kinds of Kindness – as she’s in the middle of a heated Best Actress race. Their fourth project together is an anthology film reuniting her with Dafoe and Qualley in a contemporary setting, Lanthimos’s first since The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Consisting of three parts, each actor will appear as a different character throughout each story. The film will also reunite her with The Favourite’s Joe Alwynn as well as Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer. This isn’t the only Lanthimos-Stone collaboration either, as they’ve also filmed a secret fifth movie together that has yet to be revealed.

Poor Things is now available on VOD and will arrive on Hulu on March 7. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the new films available to stream this week.

Poor Things The incredible tale about the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter.Release Date December 8, 2023