Guillermo del Toro is finally bringing his lifelong passion project to the screen: a new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
TV
First-look photos reveal Jacob Elordi as the Creature opposite Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, with Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz among a stacked ensemble. Here’s a tidy rundown of what’s confirmed so far.
When does it come out?
- Select theaters: October 17, 2025
- Netflix worldwide: November 7, 2025
This two-step rollout positions Frankenstein as a marquee fall title with theatrical release before landing on streaming.
Is there a trailer?
Yes, there’s a teaser trailer out now. It opens with Isaac’s Victor intoning, “Some of what I will tell you is fact, some is not, but it is all true,” before cutting through conceptual flashes of the experiment’s inception and its fateful awakening.
Who’s in the cast?
- Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein
- Jacob Elordi as The Creature
- Mia Goth (featured in opulent, jewel-and-feather looks in the stills)
- Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance, Lars Mikkelsen, Felix Kammerer, David Bradley, Christian Convery
Behind the camera, Guillermo del Toro writes and directs, continuing his signature blend of Gothic romance and humanist monster myth.
What’s the story?
Grounded in Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic, the film charts Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant, hubristic scientist, who assembles life from dead matter and confronts the ruinous consequences of creation without accountability. Del Toro has called Frankenstein his favorite novel for years, citing the Creature’s aching capacity for love (and fear when that love is denied) as a guiding idea for his career-long empathy toward “monsters.”
What do the first photos show?
Production stills (by Ken Woroner/Netflix) sketch a tactile, moody world:
- Elordi’s Creature, hooded, scarfed, and more haunted than hideous.
- Isaac’s Victor, addressing a medical lecture hall; rational theater as moral crucible.
- Mia Goth, adorned in peacock feathers and jewels, hinting at courtly ritual and tragic romance.
- Family dynamics and origin threads, Charles Dance and Christian Convery as Leopold and young Victor; moments with David Bradley as the Blind Man suggesting fragile human kindness.
Expect del Toro’s material obsessions, stitched textures, candlelit stone, instruments of science, rendered with the artisan detail that won him his third Oscar for Pinocchio.
How long has del Toro wanted to make this?
For over a decade. He spoke openly about the project as early as 2010, quoting the Creature’s hunger for love and its pivot to fear, an idea that underpins his cinema of outsiders (The Shape of Water, Cabinet of Curiosities, Pinocchio). Frankenstein is his return to the source text that shaped that worldview.
Why this version matters?
Del Toro doesn’t treat “the monster” as spectacle; he treats otherness as mirror. With Elordi, whose physicality reads both imposing and vulnerable, and Isaac, adept at tortured intelligence, the film is set up as a character-first tragedy rather than a jump-scare machine. The costume and production design glimpsed so far also signal a fashion-forward Gothic: rationalist silhouettes against scavenged layers; surgical whites versus jewel-toned ritual; surfaces that photograph like bone, wax, and midnight.
We’ll update this guide as new footage, runtime, and soundtrack details surface. For now, first images and the teaser point to a faithful, emotionally charged Frankenstein, stitched with del Toro’s trademark tenderness for the so-called monster and his exacting eye for handcrafted worlds.
