Del Toro's Frankenstein premieres in LA ahead of staggered release

Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited adaptation of Frankenstein premiered in Los Angeles on Monday, with the film’s cast and creative team attending a Netflix-hosted red carpet ahead of a staggered release that begins in select theaters on October 17 and expands to global streaming on November 7. The film stars Jacob Elordi as the Creature and Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, and the trailer and festival screenings have emphasized a retelling that centers the Creature’s point of view even as it preserves the novel’s gothic scope.

The new trailer, released in October, opens with the Creature’s voiceover declaring, "My maker told his tale, and I will tell you mine," and follows images of storms, battlefields and a ship frozen in ice. It presents a version of the Creature stitched together from corpses of Crimean War soldiers, a resurrected soldier whose memories and grief shape his search for a maker and the film’s moral conflict. As the trailer closes the Creature warns, "If you are not to award me love, then I will indulge in rage," a line that frames the film’s exploration of responsibility, rage and the consequences of creation.

On the red carpet and in interviews, Elordi...