Fresh off an Oscar triumph for Best Animated Feature, “Pinnochio” director Guillermo del Toro may have found his stars for his next big project.
The filmmaker behind “Crimson Peak,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Pacific Rim” is prepping a new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for Netflix. Andrew Garfield (“Tick Tick … Boom”), Oscar Isaac (“Ex Machina”) and Mia Goth (“Pearl”) are in early talks to join, according to multiple media reports.
While it’s unknown whether Isaac or Garfield would be playing, respectively, Dr. Frankenstein and his cursed creation, it is presumed that Goth would be playing Frankenstein’s love interest, who may or may not be Elizabeth Lavenza.
Goth is hot off the buzzy and acclaimed Ti West horror films “X” and “Pearl,” with a third chapter in the would-be franchise on the way. Garfield nabbed an Oscar nomination for “Tick Tick… Boom” in 2021 and stole much of the third act of Sony’s $1.9 billion-grossing “Spider-Man: No Way Home” before nabbing Emmy and SAG nominations for Hulu’s “Under the Banner of Heaven.” Isaac has been in demand for a decade and nabbed an Emmy for HBO’s “Scenes From A Marriage” and recently fronted the Marvel Disney+ series “Moon Knight.”
While Del Toro has been developing this project for years, it is unknown if this would be a period picture or a modern, present-tense take on the classic sci-fi horror novel. In a skewed irony, Del Toro had previously planned to make a live-action “Beauty and the Beast” before that project fell through, so instead he made a loose, original riff on that classic fairy tale. “The Shape of Water” would win Best Picture and Best Director at the 2018 Academy Awards.
For that matter, the much-acclaimed “Pinnochio” was an explicit adaptation even while it arguably emphasized the story’s “What makes a man?” similarities between itself and Shelley’s initially titled “The Modern Prometheus.”
