While talking to us at Comic-Con, Guillermo del Toro reflects on his vision for Frankenstein, including when it should be set.
Ever since it was revealed earlier this month that Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan were heading up plans to build a shared and potentially “modernized” Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe, fans wondered what exactly this meant for the characters’ presentation—and if Guillermo del Toro was still in line to remake Frankenstein for the studio.
A project that has obviously been near and dear to the creature feature filmmaker’s heart, del Toro has on more than one occasion described Frankenstein as his favorite book, and one that he is nervous to approach.
So, when I sat down with him at San Diego Comic-Con to talk about his current blood-curdling vampire TV show, The Strain—which seeks to bring classic vampire horror tropes to the modern age—I had to ask if he would ever consider modernizing Frankenstein.
“No, completely period,” del Toro said. “I don’t think the monsters gain anything by being arbitrarily taken away from their literary roots. I love the idea of doing Frankenstein as a period piece.”
Del Toro further compared it with The Strain, which despite its self-aware similarities to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it is still very much its own twisted creation.
“The Strain can take liberties with vampiric lore, because it’s not adapting a novel. I think it would be fascinating to see a modern take of Frankenstein, but you don’t have to do the novel, I think.” Of course, when asked how exactly he would adapt the novel, Del Toro just smiled and said, “The key of how I want to approach it, if I ever do it, is one idea, and it would be super-spoilery.”
The way del Toro spoke about the movie indicates that he still very much has the idea of making a Frankenstein movie for Universal on his mind, which should be a boon to Alex Kurtzman. The blockbuster writer and producer, who is still executive producing a 2016 Mummy reboot and an undated Van Helsing movie with long-time collaborator Roberto Orci, told Collider last week that “nothing would make me happier” than to have del Toro involved with a new Frankenstein movie at Universal. “We’re only at the beginning exploratory phase of all of it, but I’m a crazy Guillermo del Toro fan. So anything he wants to be involved in, we’d be honored.”
However, this does raise an interesting question about the approach of the Universal Monster Cinematic Universe. Previously, when talking about The Mummy and Van Helsing reboots (before the Kurtzman and Morgan announcement), Orci said to IGN, “We’re kind of imagining updating these kind of things…We just had a notion of how to make it modern and have a slightly different tone.”
Granted, Orci is not overseeing the whole universe Universal is intending to build and some time has passed since he said that. But hopefully, del Toro gets carte blanche and none will pass for his take on Mary Shelley’s legendary vision.
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that's your thing!