A classic tale of gothic horror is next on Guillermo del Toro’s slate, with Andrew Garfield and Oscar Isaac set to star.
Netflix’s ongoing deal with Guillermo del Toro looks to be one of the smarter moves that the streaming platform has made in the last few years. Having already yielded the gothic-themed Cabinet Of Curiosities series and a stop motion feature in the form of Pinocchio, it looks like a live action feature film may be next.
Giant Freakin’ Robot is reporting that Andrew Garfield and Oscar Isaac have been casts as the two leads what is set to be del Toro’s next project, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic Promethean tale, Frankestein. Isaac is said to be playing Victor Frankenstein whilst Garfield is reportedly set to play his creation, the monster that he brings to life before disavowing.
The casting here feels perfect and this project makes so much sense, it could have been dreamed up by a Netflix algorithm. Del Toro’s films often feature monsters, usually ones that are tragic in some way, whilst there’s not many directors out there that are as committed as he is to working within the gothic genre. He’s also talked about the Frankenstein influence on the early part of Pinocchio too.
We’ve seen some pretty memorable adaptations of Mary Shelley’s novel before, not least James Whale’s 1931 take, largely regarded as the definitive version. Kenneth Branagh also had a decent crack at it alongside Robert de Niro in 1994’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. That film came in the wake of the success of 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and lately, we’ve seen a whole host of Dracula projects whirr into production. As such, it seems only fitting that Frankenstein once again lights up the screen with what many regard as history’s first science fiction novel offering a perfect counterpoint of operatic pathos to the darkly seductive horror that accompanies any Dracula adaptation.
This presumably leaves del Toro’s planned stop motion take on The Buried Giant as his follow-up project. He said back in January that “the next stop-motion film I’m making is an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, which I’m currently co-writing with Dennis Kelly [Matilda: The Musical], and we start the design process in two months. I’m shooting a live-action feature first. But in the meantime, we’re developing a look-book, and in about two years if everything goes well, we’ll start production.”
It looks like we know now for sure what that project is. We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
—
Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
