Guillermo del Toro’s long‑nurtured vision of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will premiere in competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in late August and stream worldwide on Netflix in November 2025, according to studio representatives who released the first production stills.
The images show Jacob Elordi towering in ragged bandages as a creature whose cracked‑marble skin evokes antique sculpture, a deliberate shift from the stitched brute of earlier films. Del Toro has framed the monster as “deeply human,” an approach already stirring debate among horror purists while drawing praise from admirers of his empathetic genre style.
Elordi accepted the part only weeks before cameras rolled after Andrew Garfield exited amid post‑strike scheduling conflicts, and the director now calls the six‑foot‑five actor “the most perfect choice for the creature.” Oscar Isaac embodies Victor Frankenstein inside a 360‑degree water‑tower laboratory constructed on a Toronto soundstage, where the scientist bolts limbs together while jokingly dubbing himself a “traumatologist.”
Mia Goth plays Elizabeth Lavenza, joined by Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance, Felix Kammerer and Ralph Ineson—an ensemble that mixes established names with emerging talent. The 149‑minute feature reunites del Toro with cinematographer Dan Laustsen and composer Alexandre Desplat and carries an R rating for “bloody violence and grisly images.”
During a recent set visit the 60‑year‑old filmmaker called the adaptation his “bucket‑list film,” admitting he once feared time would run out before a backer embraced his operatic take on Shelley’s tale of hubris. Netflix green‑lit the production under its ongoing pact with the Oscar‑winning director after the success of his 2022 stop‑motion Pinocchio and is positioning Frankenstein as a key year‑end awards contender.
Festival programmers describe the finished cut as a meditation on faith, fear and fatherhood rather than a conventional horror piece, cementing its status as one of the Lido’s most anticipated premieres.
