Director Guillermo del Toro has finally had the chance to make one of his dream projects, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic tale Frankenstein that is set up at the Netflix streaming service. The movie is set to reach select theatres on October 17th, with its Netflix premiere to follow on November 7th. In the build-up to the release, we’ve heard multiple times that the people involved with the film don’t consider it to be a horror movie – and during a recent chat with Deadline, del Toro described it as “a family drama.”
JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray already had the chance to watch del Toro’s Frankenstein, and you can read his 7/10 review at THIS LINK. The film shows us what happens when, driven by arrogance, his hunger to unlock the secret of eternal life, and his own growing madness, Victor Frankenstein creates life without ever considering what would happen to the wretched creature who, by design, is cursed to live forever. Here’s the official logline: Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.
Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight) stars alongside Mia Goth (Pearl), Jacob Elordi (Saltburn), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), with Ralph Ineson (The Witch) showing up for a pivotal cameo. At one point, Andrew Garfield was in the cast, but he had to drop out and was replaced by Elordi… and the role Garfield passed over to Elordi was the Monster.
Del Toro has been talking about making a new version of Frankenstein for more than a decade. Years ago, he had the project set up at Universal, with Doug Jones (The Shape of Water) on board to play Frankenstein’s Monster. The movie got far enough into pre-production that Jones even saw a Monster bust inspired by Bernie Wrightson’s artwork in an illustrated adaptation of Shelley’s novel, which Wrightson spent seven years working on. But then the project fell apart. Now it’s finally happening at the Netflix streaming service, which previously teamed with del Toro on Pinocchio and the anthology series Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
While del Toro has previously said that this is “an incredibly emotional movie” that he doesn’t consider to be a horror film, the Motion Picture Association ratings board has revealed that this Frankenstein does has some bloody violence in it. In fact, they’ve given the film an R rating for bloody violence and grisly images.
Speaking with Deadline, Mia Goth said she doesn’t “see Frankenstein as a horror film. And Guillermo said as much… if anything, it’s a family drama. It’s a story about fathers and sons, it’s about forgiveness, it’s about redemption, it’s about understanding. And I think people might be surprised at how incredibly moving it is and how much heart there is. It’s a story that’s been with Guillermo his whole life; he’s been thinking about this since he was 10 years old.” Guillermo del Toro conceded that “nominally and generically, it is a horror movie,” but “after 30 years of making fantasy films, you know they can be something on top of that. And I think this is a family drama in many ways. It’s about the very Catholic notion of fathers and sons, and the pain that we transmit from one to the next generation. So, there’s that sort of level of emotion. After 200 years, for the book and the story to still provoke compassion and fear of crossing a boundary, those are things I think we innovated in a beautiful way.“
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