It's interesting that we have two upcoming films from the world of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", directed by two of the biggest names in Hollywood. While Guillermo del Toro will be bringing out his "faithful" adaptation of the classic book, actress-filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal will tackle the story of the Bride of Frankenstein, but with a killers-on-the-run spin set in the 1930s.
Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale play the eponymous bride and Frankenstein, respectively. Gyllenhaal has assembled a cast that's impressive, to say the least. Buckley and Bale have company in the form of Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Penelope Cruz, among others.
The Bride marks a reunion for Buckley and Gyllenhaal after The Lost Daughter, for which the former earned an Academy Award nomination, and the latter a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Bonnie & Clyde influence is evident from the uncensored teaser which promises an adventure unlike Gyllenhaal's directorial debut The Lost Daughter, which was devoid of fantasy and horror elements. The Bride, on the other hand, sees her flexing her creative muscles in a way we have never seen before. The film will arrive in theatres on March 6, 2026. This include a 'filmed for IMAX' version too, the teaser of which has been released separately.
Meanwhile, Del Toro's film, which he has called a dream project, is expected to feature every trademark of the visionary filmmaker who has been known for infusing his work with references to classics from literature and cinema. An avid cineaste with a voracious appetite for books and movies, Del Toro has often toyed with the idea of man's creation of monsters or man's evolution into a monster. He won the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture for The Shape of Water, in addition to the Best Animated Feature Oscar for Pinocchio. Del Toro's Frankenstein will hit Netflix on November 7, 2025.
Interestingly, Del Toro has cited the 1931 film adaptation of Frankenstein and its 1935 sequel Bride of Frankenstein as two of his favourite films. In 2018, while accepting his Best Director BAFTA trophy, he called Mary Shelley an important figure and inspiration for him as a creator.
“The shadow of English culture has loomed large in my life. But the most important figure from [the] English legacy is, incredibly for me, a teenager by the name of Mary Shelley," he said. "She has remained a figure as important in my life as if it was family. And so many times, when I want to give up, when I think about giving up, when people tell me dreaming of the movies and the stories I dream of is impossible, I think of her. Because she picked up the plight of Caliban and she gave weight to the burden of Prometheus, and she gave voice to the voiceless, and presence to the invisible, and showed me that sometimes to talk about monsters, we need to fabricate monsters of our own. And parables do that for us.”