Del Toro's Frankenstein hits theaters, streams on Netflix Nov 7, 2025

Guillermo del Toro’s long-gestating reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein opens in select theaters on October 17 and will stream globally on Netflix on November 7, 2025. The film, a Victorian-era interpretation set in 1857, stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the Creature and frames the familiar tale as a two-part chronicle of creator and creation, exploring ambition, parenthood, and the costs of trying to overcome death.

In del Toro’s version, Victor is an obsessive scientist who assembles a living being from scavenged corpses and abandons it when he is repulsed by the result. The Creature, initially gentle and curious, learns, suffers rejection and violence, and becomes a force of vengeance that draws the two into a tragic cycle. Del Toro has described his relationship to Shelley’s novel as deeply personal, saying, "For me, it’s the Bible," and has cast the film as an emotional, existential story about fathers and sons rather than a straightforward horror movie.

The production makes substantial departures from Shelley’s 1818 novel. The film adds new characters and subplots, including an arms-manufacturer patron who bankrolls Frankenstein’s work...