Halloween is just around the corner, and with it comes premieres of plenty of new spooky films — and this year, Marvel’s getting in on the deal. In addition to a handful of other seasonal Disney+ premieres, the superhero mega-studio is premiering Werewolf by Night, a new, hour-long special dedicated to one of comics’ scariest creatures of the night.

Filmed in black-and-white to emulate old monster movies of the past, the special goes somewhere Marvel has never dared to before, following Jack Russell (Gael García Bernal) as he spends a night at Bloodstone Manor, going up against a handful of monster-hunters to compete for the namesake of the infamous Bloodstone family: a ruby-red gem with supernatural powers. What the others don’t know, however, is that Jack might be hiding some powers of his own — ones that could put he and everyone around him in serious danger.

Collider was excited to sit down with Bernal to chat about the special — which is streaming on Disney+ now, in time for the Halloween season — and what it means for him as an actor. During this interview, Bernal discussed the kind of research he did for the role, as well as what in particular draws him to horror, and what it was like making a Marvel special in only five weeks.

Check out the interview in the player above, or read a transcript down below, and be sure to stream Werewolf by Night on Disney+.

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Image via Disney+

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COLLIDER: First off, I'd like to say congratulations on the special. It is incredible. It's maybe my favorite thing Marvel's ever done. So you have quite the entry to the MCU here this year.

GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, I'm glad you liked it.

You're welcome. And I wanted to know, because this film is so, or this special is so heavily inspired by old horror films of the '30s and the '40s and the '50s, was there anything you looked to specifically when you were researching the role? Were there any films, any actors in particular that you looked at?

BERNAL: Yes, absolutely. I mean, apart from the most direct ones, which would be the English speaking films that were made in those days, there were also, I saw some crazy ones actually from the Bulgaria, Eastern Bloc area that were quite interesting as well, and also some comedies as well from Latin America in those days, with a werewolf. And so the whole world of monsters and definitely of werewolves is absolutely open, where the opportunity to engage into this project was a chance to really be free to interpret and to color this character the way we wanted.

And it's very difficult in one hour to tell all this vast kind of biography, or let's say the construction of this character, because it's a character that has lived [for] 400 years, maybe. So there were many things that would set the tone and set the musical scale of what we wanted to do, there were many things that I was also interested in pondering around this, and I'm still incredibly curious and wanting to see where these characters' lives go. Where does this kind of develop? And I love playing a monster, it's fantastic. It's great, it's very free, and very daring and experimental as well.

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Image via Disney+

You've done horror a couple of times with this, and you also did Old last year. Is there something about that genre in particular that appeals to you, or is it just something that kind of falls into your lap with specific projects?

BERNAL: Yeah, well, I actually thought that it was something that I was completely away from. I had never done something close to this because…I mean I don't know why, but I'm really fortunate that now I'm able to do this because I've always had a lot of respect for the horror genre, because it's the most…stylized version of cinema in a way, and I love that it can go anywhere, it can lead anywhere. There's a lot of moments in cinema, in horror, because what you don't see and what you don't listen to is as important as what you see and what you listen to.

So there's key rules that are put together, and the whole invitation is also how to break them, how to break these rules and how to play with this. And so I love being part of this because it is the way I like, also, to do films. Not for the sake of me playing a character that will give me this or that, or will satisfy this or that kind of curiosity in me…but most important is, I want to do films that are good. Doesn't matter the character, in a way. And so I am really glad to be, and so lucky to be part of a world like this.

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I can imagine joining something as big as Marvel at this point in your career is quite different from other things that you've done before. At least in terms of scale, I would imagine?

BERNAL: It is very different. Yes, it is very different, but at the same time, it is the best possible way to..normally maybe from the outside it would seem like it is getting into a place that has its rules. But what I heard even before getting involved into this, from all the actors, was like, "Oh, you will be in a place where there's a lot of room to invent and to experiment. There's many things that you can play with," and it's true. It's true. Here, we would, every day we would come up with new ideas and we would retract from certain ideas that were not so good that we thought, "Oh, no, maybe that's not such a good idea." But we would really try out things, and that's fantastic.

I mean, what a great opportunity, to be able to have a lot of time. I mean, we shot this in five weeks for our 50 minute film, so I love it. I love it, it's really fantastic. I mean, it's the best place to be able to experiment and to play around. And monsters, I mean, it's such a, I don't know, it's such a great vast place where we can try out many, many different things and I'm really, really happy, and lucky in a way.

Werewolf by Night is streaming now on Disney+.