‘Frankenstein’ By Guillermo del Toro.

Following his Oscar win for “Pinocchio”, Guillermo del Toro has set his next live-action film at Netflix. Deadline broke the news that Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac (Dune) and Mia Goth (X, Pearl) were in early talks to star in del Toro’s Frankenstein take. Jacob Elordi (Euphoria) eventually joined the cast and replaced Garfield for the role of the monster. Del Toro will write and direct his long-gestating passion project. Netflix first optioned Elizabeth S. Wrightson’s Frankenstein in 2022. This is optioning the visual representation that Bernie Wrightson developed for the character who passed away in 2017.

In September, del Toro revealed that Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds) had been added to the cast, In January, Jacob Elordi replaced Garfield due to scheduling conflicts that had resulted from the SAG-AFTRA strikes. Felix Kammerer (All Quiet on the Western Front), Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Christian Convery and Charles Dance (Game Of Thrones) joined the cast. In April 2024, del Toro announced that Ralph Ineson (The Witch) had been cast in the film in a pivotal cameo appearance.

The current logline for the movie, which is set during the 1800s, is as follows: “Set in Eastern Europe in the 19th century, the story of Dr. Pretorious, who needs to track down Frankenstein’s monster-who is believed to have died in a fire forty years before-in order to continue the experiments of Dr. Frankenstein”

Guillermo has said that a project he “would kill to make” would be a faithful “Miltonian tragedy” version of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. This project has been in development since 2008s, at Universal Pictures as part of the now scrapped Dark Universe franchise. del Toro stated that if he had the funding, he would make an adaptation of Frankenstein that would span two or three films due to the book’s complexity and changing points of view.

In 2023, the project was revived by Netflix, where Del Toro had signed a multi-year deal to produce projects. He already released two projects with them, Oscar winner “Pinocchio” and a horror anthology series “Cabinet of Curiosities”.

The filming began on February 12 in Toronto under the working title “Prodigal Father”, it will also be partly filmed in London. with an expected wrap date of July.

Dan Lausten is the cinematographer, he did Del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” and “Nightmare Alley”, he has also lensed the first three “John Wick” films.