Coming off of his recent Academy Award win for Pinocchio, acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro is finalizing the cast for his next live-action film. According to Deadline, Oscar Isaac, Andrew Garfield, and Mia Goth are in negotiations to star in del Toro's upcoming adaptation of the iconic Frankenstein for Netflix.
The film will be directed by del Toro off a screenplay that he is currently writing himself. Sources told Deadline that the director is still finalizing the script, and that no formal offers have been given to any three of the actors. Despite this, del Toro has reportedly met with the trio and is working on nailing down their roles in the film, and Isaac, Garfield, and Goth have all confirmed that they are on board to work with the director. Netflix already has a strong relationship with del Toro, having co-produced and released Pinocchio. The director also created an anthology horror series, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, for the studio.
While few details are available about Frankenstein, including what potential roles Isaac or Garfield will play, it was reported that Goth will likely portray the love interest of Dr. Frankenstein. It is unclear if del Toro's film will be set in the modern day or historic times, or what kind of spin del Toro could put on the classic story. The noted director has been working on an adaptation of Mary Shelley's magnum opus as a passion project for years, and has described it as one of his strongest desires. His adaptation of the film has long been in various stages of development, and the director has said as far back as 2014 that he was setting up the feature at Universal as part of the studio's 'Dark Universe,' with del Toro mainstay Doug Jones reportedly testing to play Frankenstein's monster. Jones had even described the monster as "hauntingly beautiful." However, development got shifted to the backburner when Universal scrapped its Dark Universe plans, and this news has become the first major update since then.
If the project comes to fruition, Frankenstein would be del Toro's first live-action film since Searchlight's Nightmare Alley in 2021, which, similarly to his animated Pinocchio, received nominations at the Academy Awards, including a nod for Best Picture, though unlike Pinocchio, didn't take home the prize. The acclaimed director is known for his artistic molds on horror and genre projects, so it will be interesting to see the direction that he could take another classic monster story.
There can be no doubt that with the trio of names attached, del Toro is pulling together three of Hollywood's most bankable stars. Isaac recently came off an Emmy-nominated stint in HBO's Scenes from a Marriage, and was recently tapped to star in the crime thriller Helltown from All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger. Garfield also recieved an Emmy nod for his work on the series Under the Banner of Heaven and was just revealed to be starring alongside Florence Pugh in StudioCanal's upcoming romance film We Live in Time. Goth is no stranger to the horror genre, as she was recently seen alongside Alexander Skarsgård in the sci-fi scarer Infinity Pool, and has garnered acclaim for her roles in a pair of horror films in 2022: X and its prequel, Pearl.
No timeline for production on Frankenstein has been revealed. Collider's interview with del Toro about Pinocchio can be seen below: