“It’s alive … in theaters!”
Guillermo del Toro‘s passion project reboot of Frankenstein is going to get a theatrical release.
Netflix announced Monday that the lavish-looking project will receive a limited release in theaters starting Oct. 17 ahead of its Netflix premiere on Nov. 7.
When the trailer (below) was released back in June and the streamer declare the film “premieres globally” on Netflix in November. At the time, Netflix did not reply to questions about whether the film would be any screenings in theaters, though del Toro himself had previously suggested in an interview that Frankenstein would get at least some theatrical play. At any rate, even a hint of the film not being in theaters resulted in considerable fan outcry at the time.
The film’s official description: “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.”
Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, with Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz.
Back in 2016, the writer-director elaborated on his passion for the project with an interview with Den of Geek and how he plans to include parts of the novel that are typically left out of other adaptations, such as its framing device which includes the North Pole sequence. So, in a sense, even though the story has been adapted countless times, moviegoers who have seen some of the most popular adaptations of the book might have never seen the “real” (or at least whole) story.
“To this day, nobody has made the book, but the book became my bible, because what Mary Shelley wrote was the quintessential sense of isolation you have as a kid,” he said. “So, Frankenstein to me is the pinnacle of everything, and part of me wants to do a version of it, part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it. I dream I can make the greatest Frankenstein ever, but then if you make it, you’ve made it. Whether it’s great or not, it’s done. You cannot dream about it anymore. That’s the tragedy of a filmmaker. You can dream of something, but once you’ve made it, you’ve made it.”