As the awards season conversation sharpens, Will Tracy’s name has become increasingly central to it. With “Bugonia,” he delivers his most focused and challenging screenplay to date, a film that crystallizes the ideas that have quietly defined his career. It is a project that announces itself not through scale, but through intent. A reimagining of the 2003 South Korean cult film “Save the Green Planet!”, the project places Tracy’s voice front and center, shaping a psychological thriller that is as much about belief as it is about power.
Tracy’s path to this moment has been defined by an acute understanding of how people speak when they are protecting status or justifying harm. He first developed that precision at The Onion, where satire required ideas to land cleanly and without excess. That discipline carried into HBO’s “Succession,” where Tracy became a key contributor to the show’s brutal fluency in the language of wealth, entitlement, and self deception.
[Spoiler Alert: The below article and transcript reveals the film’s ending. Stop here if you do not want the film spoiled.]
With “Bugonia,” Tracy builds on those instincts while pushing them into darker, more unsettling territory. The initial concept came to him through producer Ari Aster, a longtime friend who encouraged him to revisit the original film despite his initial reluctance to engage with existing material. What ultimately drew Tracy in was the elasticity of the premise and its relevance to a contemporary American landscape shaped by isolation, grievance, and conspiracy thinking.
The film centers on Teddy, played with unnerving restraint by Jesse Plemons, a socially isolated man who becomes convinced that a powerful tech CEO, portrayed by Emma Stone, is not human and is orchestrating the destruction of the planet. When Teddy kidnaps her and confines her to his basement, the story locks into an intense psychological standoff. The film unfolds less as a thriller driven by twists than as an examination of how certainty can harden into violence.
The script’s clarity and control attracted director Yorgos Lanthimos, marking the first time he has directed a screenplay he did not co write. Rather than overwhelming the material, the collaboration allows Tracy’s dialogue and structure to guide the film’s rhythm. “Bugonia” plays as a tightly wound chamber piece, relying on conversation and power shifts to generate tension.
As awards season gains momentum, “Bugonia” has established itself as a formidable presence. The film has already earned a Critics Choice nomination for Best Screenplay, alongside recognition from several regional critics groups. Plemons has emerged as a name to watch in the Best Actor conversation, while Stone is almost a lock for most film award best actress nominations.
“Bugonia” builds toward an ending that resists comfort and rejects easy moral distance. The film refuses to soften its implications, instead challenging the audience to sit with them. “I was more interested in an ending that makes us think in a broader way about our relationship to each other and the planet,” Tracy has said, a line that captures the film’s ambition and its unsettling effect.
Tracy spoke to Awards Focus about the film’s origins, the themes that emerged as priorities for this adaptation, and the great fortune required for a film to ultimately stick the landing.
Awards Focus: After seeing the original film, “Save the Green Planet!”, what about the story felt worth expanding for a global audience? Which elements did you think would resonate most, and what needed to change in adapting it for this version?
Will Tracy: I had never seen the film “Save the Green Planet!” or even heard of it. Ari Aster, who is my friend and a producer of the film, brought it to my attention. To be honest, at first, I didn’t necessarily love the idea of writing a remake of really any film. I’d never tried that before, and certainly not a film that I hadn’t seen.
I mainly said yes because I kind of wanted to be friends with Ari Aster. I thought this might be one of those things that happens a lot where you form a creative partnership over one project, that goes by the wayside, and then you find something else to work on. But then Ari sent me a copy of the film, and I saw immediately what I could do with it that wouldn’t make it feel like a remake to me. My preoccupations would just be different than the original filmmakers. I sensed that the premise had some intrinsic value that the original filmmakers could not have foreseen in terms of it feeling very contemporary and very American. It seemed to be either accidentally prescient or prescient about our current cultural and political attitudes. I knew what kind of characters I wanted to create and what kind of conversations I want them to be having to make a very conversational, talky movie, which the original isn’t exactly. This is really a chamber piece with a lot of chat in it, but hopefully exciting and interesting chat. It felt very readable to me.
AF: You talk about the chatting, and I do feel like with Jesse Plemons’ character, we hear mostly his voice for a good chunk of the film, certainly the first half. When you’re writing, are you the kind of writer that visualizes a particular performer as you’re writing scripts?
Tracy: I try not to do that for simple self-preservation. It is difficult sometimes because how do you imagine a faceless person? You start to attach some sort of face, even if you’re creating it in your head. But if you get too attached to an actor and then you send it to them and they immediately say no—either because they don’t like it or they’re booked for the next two years—it’s just heartbreaking. So I try not to have anyone attached in my head at all.
It just so happens that Jesse Plemons is sort of my favorite actor of his generation. It’s exactly what I would want for the role. I found that particular role, even after the script was written and I was talking to Ari and others about who could play Teddy, was harder than I thought. You need someone who can feel convincingly from that socioeconomic background, but also someone you feel quite a lot of sympathy for. You need to see the scared and hurt little boy in his eyes, but also someone who could be quite scary and intimidating if they needed to be. It’s difficult to find someone who can do all that, handle the comedy, and not “over-egg the custard” by trying to be too funny. He ended up being perfect. And then, of course, once Yorgos signed on, I had a pretty good idea who he had in mind for his leading lady, so I didn’t have to give too much thought to that.
AF: As you’re writing Teddy, were you realizing that this has become a role where the casting may make or break the film? Are you comfortable at that point leaving it to the director, or does it drive you crazy?
Tracy: You can drive yourself crazy thinking of all the ways that something can go wrong tonally or in casting. There have been many examples of great scripts that end up being disappointing films because of a central casting problem. A movie can also be tonally ruined by the score. You could take the exact same scenes, put a different score on, and people would suddenly like a movie that they didn’t like before. You have to not think too much about all the ways things can go wrong. The truth is, it’s kind of a miracle when any movie ends up being a good, satisfying film because of all the variables. Once I knew Yorgos was on board, I felt very safe because casting is one of his many talents. He knows how to do comedy and he knows my tone; he’s not going to try to go too big with it.
AF: When you were adapting this, there were so many huge themes: environmentalism, male isolation, capitalism. Was there a particular one you were most interested in, or were you more focused on making sure this was, at its core, a character study?
Tracy: I was interested in a kind of widespread disassociation from reality that we’re seeing in our culture, likely as a symptom of the internet or human civilization. I wanted to examine that somewhat sympathetically as an outgrowth of real material, emotional, and existential concerns for people like Teddy. I think he has real grievances and has been genuinely abused by the system—by his employer, the police, the government, Big Pharma, and capitalism generally. I share a lot of his concerns. I don’t think his methods are often sound, but in the end of the film, he ends up being quite right about a lot of things.
AF: I’m interested in that ending. You talk about the disassociation from reality, and that could easily be the whole film, but then we go all the way to “he was right.” It’s a wonderful twist. Did you ever think about a different ending?
Tracy: Not really. I think if you make it a film about a guy who was wrong and a smart CEO who tricked him, you’re not doing justice to Teddy’s valid concerns. You’re making him sort of stupid and sort of crazy, and I wasn’t very interested in that. I was more interested in an ending that makes us think in a broader way about our relationship to each other and our relationship to the planet. That ending is only possible if you work on the widest scope possible.
AF: When someone like Emma Stone is cast, her presence is going to naturally make the viewer think she’s the protagonist because she’s Emma Stone. Did that impact how you wrote, or did it help fulfill the ending?
Tracy: I think it helps in the push and pull of the audience’s sympathies. You’re moving between these two people, both of whom take turns being the sympathetic one with a good argument. Despite her magnetism and the optics of the situation, it becomes pretty clear that she’s not a straightforwardly sympathetic character; she’s more complex than that. She says at one point that she became the type of human she never wanted to become. Playing with those two actors really helps because they are both in a competition for the audience’s approbation.
AF: Does writing a film like this feel uncomfortable? There is no formulaic nature to it, and it feels like a film that requires a second viewing. As a writer, do you ever just want that simple ending that leads to instant gratification?
Tracy: It is hard. There have been some people I’m close with who I wish would see the film a second time because it does reward that. But it’s the price you pay. We tried to make a film that is open to various interpretations and open to debate. Some people see the ending as bleak and nihilistic, and others, including myself, find the ending strangely hopeful and motivating. I would not like it if only my personal interpretation were the only one available. I do think I write around topics that are provocative or divisive. Because the topics are so serious, finding the humor in them can strike some people as inappropriate. You just don’t know what people are going to think, so I only go with what I like.
AF: Looking at your CV, I was surprised to see your work on “The Onion” and “The Daily Show.” You’re used to writing satire and really good humor, but this is a bit different. How do you find that balance and how many rewrites does it take?
Tracy: Honestly, I don’t think about it while I’m writing. It’s not like I’m in the middle of a scene thinking the balance of funny to serious is not quite right. I probably write in situations that are inherently funny because of how extreme they are. A woman being kidnaped is not necessarily funny, but these two young men are not natural criminals. This is not what they were put on this earth to do. They shave her head and she has white makeup all over her; there’s something absurd about that. The balance I find is that the characters are playing it straight. Human behavior, in the way people contradict themselves or self-justify, is funny even when they aren’t trying to be.
AF: I feel like the backstory and intentions of Jesse’s character are well explained, but I’m interested in how much of a backstory you wrote for Emma’s character. For instance, how long has she been on this planet?
Tracy: I didn’t do a tremendous amount, but my sense is she didn’t spend her childhood here. She arrived with a well-studied backstory for herself. I see her as being here long enough to assume a great amount of power and also long enough to become the type of human she suggested she’d never become—corrupt and power-hungry. She kind of becomes the worst parts of us. Through her interactions with Teddy, she discovers that, but doesn’t ultimately make the correct choice. She doesn’t make the cold-hearted, logical alien choice; she makes the “Fortune 500” choice. She makes the choice a human CEO would make: cut the losses and try again in a different market.
AF: Did you model her after any specific person?
Tracy: No one person, but I did research into prominent women CEOs. One thing that came from my research was an interview with Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors. She mentioned ending a meeting at 5:30 because her daughter had a soccer game and work-life balance is important. I remember thinking that sounds nice, but I bet her assistant or the people on the comms team would say, “Are you crazy? We can’t leave at 5:30.” So I saw little bits of surface optical things like that.
AF: Working with Yorgos, were there any major changes once he became part of the project?
Tracy: I would say merely cosmetic changes. He did say it was the first time he’d taken a script that he did not co-write from the ground floor. He took a script that he found was suitable as is. The changes he made were just to fit his cinematic language. We did a few structural things, nothing really with dialogue. His biggest contribution was the title. It didn’t really have one, and Yorgos suggested “Begonia”—which refers to the Greek myth about bees spontaneously rising from the corpse of a cow. We liked the idea of new life coming from the death of a big, lumbering beast. It sounds poetic and has non-specific associations.
AF: Did the final scene, the still images of people who had died, come out of your script?
Tracy: That was my ending for the script: seeing people around the world drop dead and winding back to the house and the bee landing on the flower. Yorgos built it out much more. His big contribution was cutting to them as still lifes—they’ve already died—rather than watching them fall. We both agreed that the way to go was to show banal situations rather than someone dead in front of the Sphinx. We wanted to show the full range of human experience to show everything that we would be missing.
AF: It’s powerful. Since we are in awards season, I’m curious what the last great thing you watched was.
Tracy: I am somewhat biased because I’m technically an executive producer of the film, but what Ari Aster did with his film “Eddington”—talk about great endings. I think it’s a great vision of American life. He did a terrific job.
AF: That is a great film. What are you working on now?
Tracy: I wrote a film that I’m hoping to direct, my first movie that I will have directed. Also, some other scripts are in various stages of development. I wish I had something imminently announced, but hopefully very soon.
AF: Fantastic. Congratulations. I really do appreciate the time.
Tracy: Thanks, buddy. Great questions. I really appreciate it, Ben.