Guillermo del Toro on Frankenstein and the Netflix & Warner Bros deal

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is a violent, romantic blockbuster made for, and best seen in, cinemas. It’s also a Netflix film that, in its first three days on the streaming service, was watched for 1.26 billion minutes in America. Del Toro, the Oscar-winning auteur behind Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Nightmare Alley, is aware of both truths: Netflix, who funded the film, gave it a theatrical release, but most people are discovering it in their living room.

“The interaction with the audience has been very intense and beautiful,” says the 61-year-old Mexican filmmaker. “The highest numbers I’ve gotten with an audience are probably Pacific Rim, this one, Shape, and Pan’s, in that order. With this one, what’s gratifying is that particularly younger audiences are looking at it three, four, five times in the theatre or at home. It’s generating fan art to an extraordinary volume.”

Del Toro is in London, in early December, talking to me in between Q&A screenings. It’s a few days after it was announced that Netflix won the bidding war to acquire Warner Bros. (We touch on that later.) Del Toro has cited watching James Whale’s 1931 version of Frankenstein at the age of seven as what inspired him to become a filmmaker. Sean Baker has also repeatedly made the same claim, except he was six at the time. Will a seven-year-old stumble upon del Toro’s Frankenstein on Netflix, and become the next del Toro or Baker?

“It’s a good point,” says del Toro. “The best communal experience is in a theatre. But I was born in ’64. A large number of movies that I discovered were on TV. Universal Monsters, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Mexican cinema of the golden era – I watched them on TV. But if you try to see Vertigo, 2001, or Lawrence of Arabia on your TV – don’t. When I finally saw Vertigo in a theatre, I realised I had never experienced it.”

Costing around $120 million, Frankenstein is big, bombastic, and full of practical effects. It’s a distinctly del Toro vision: the camera has the hovering curiosity of Pan’s Labyrinth; the production design boasts the extravagance of Nightmare Alley but on an even larger scale. After all, Frankenstein has always been in his films, whether it’s the “mad scientist” surgeon in Cronos, or an actual quip about Frankenstein in Mimic.

Del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel is to shift the setting to Victorian London and split the story into two sections. The first half is from the perspective of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), a surgeon who reanimates dead body parts, creates The Creature (Jacob Elordi), and in turn regrets his invention. The film’s final hour then follows The Creature as he grows hair, discovers emotions, and confronts an inability to die. Del Toro and Baker fell in love with Boris Karloff as The Monster; audiences, too, might understand why The Creature is played by the heartthrob from Saltburn.

Del Toro initially planned to make Frankenstein after Hellboy II: The Golden Army. In a 2011 New Yorker profile, the director is working on a proof-of-concept video for Universal. “The version I developed with Universal was a different monster,” says del Toro. “It was asymmetric and closer to the depiction in the illustrated book.” When del Toro pitched the project to Netflix, he only needed to present a handful of images. “Pinocchio and Frankenstein were greenlit incredibly early. Ted Sarandos said, ‘Give me your bucket list.’ I said, ‘Pinocchio and Frankenstein.’ He said yes to both.”

As demonstrated in Frankenstein: The Anatomy Lesson, the accompanying making-of doc on Netflix, Frankenstein uses real sets, practical effects, and costumes so detailed that you want to pause the screen. Meanwhile, the camera patiently floats through elaborate rooms and locations, savouring the intricate production design. Is he trying to shoot it like a documentary?

“Well, the camera never stops,” says del Toro. “It’s different in each episode. We’re using a 24mm lens that gives you a wide image but doesn’t distort. The sections in the Frozen North have a limited colour palette of blue, white, and gold; the camera is very elegiac, landscape, oriented towards feeling epic. The childhood section is shot to be painterly; the colour palette becomes black, white, and red. In Victor’s youth, the point of view is very active. The camera tracks Victor; it’s zooming, craning in, craning out. In Victor’s story, all the colours come to play, except red. And then comes The Creature’s story, and it becomes a fairytale. The colour palette changes to straw, moss, wood. It becomes naturalistic. The camera becomes contemplative. But the entire time, there’s not a single static shot.”

I believe the camera should be curious, like another character trying to take a look at things. I haven’t put a camera on a tripod since, probably, 2001

It’s quite a contrast from the pacing of, for example, Mimic, or del Toro’s other 90s movies. Is it del Toro evolving as a filmmaker, or what serves the story? “The style doesn’t exist in and of itself. You’re going to shoot Pacific Rim differently to The Devil’s Backbone. One thing I’ve tried to do from The Devil’s Backbone on is to never shoot with a static camera. I believe the camera should be curious, like another character trying to take a look at things. I haven’t put a camera on a tripod since, probably, 2001.”

Del Toro’s next film is a stop-motion adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Buried Giant. After that will be Fury, a gritty thriller with Oscar Isaac that’s based on the 2016 Spanish film The Fury of a Patient Man. I tell del Toro that I’ve seen The Fury of a Patient Man, and can’t imagine it being shot like a del Toro film.

“The Fury of a Patient Man has two twists that are very unexpected, and I like that, and it has a really good first and second act. But the third act is going to be completely reinvented. My intention is very different from the Spanish movie. My intention is to have two characters – one that’s looking at the past, and one that’s looking at the future – having a dialogue. The way I’m going to shoot it is very different from my normal style. I want to do a lot of hand-held. No cranes. The last four or five films have been shot almost entirely on cranes and Steadicam. I want to do a more jagged style.”

The camera will always be moving? “It could be. I’m writing the screenplay with Scott Frank, and until we finish it, I won’t decide the formal aspects.” Is Isaac playing the “patient man”, or the criminal the “patient man” is getting revenge on? “Oscar said, ‘When you finish the screenplay, can I choose which character I play? I said, ‘100 per cent. I’ll write the screenplay, and you choose it.’”

Our career-spanning conversation touches on his favourite unproduced screenplay that he’s written (it’s either Beauty and the Beast or Left Hand of Darkness), his thoughts on mortality (“it’s vital to know you’re going to die – death gives life some meaning”), and if he’d ever finance a passion project like Coppola did with Megapolis (he doesn’t have that kind of money, but he funded the anatomical waxes in Frankenstein).

Del Toro, an avowed supporter of cinemas, has made two films in a row with Netflix. I ask him about Netflix winning the bid to acquire Warner Bros, a deal that some have suggested will kill the theatrical model. “It’s so much above my paygrade,” says del Toro, laughing. “I was not consulted, nor informed. It seems like an era of consolidation between companies.” He adds, “How they change entertainment is one thing. How they change the culture is another. I still believe it’s important to have the option of experiencing movies theatrically. As to the rest? I think it’s too early to even speculate. The deal will be real in 12 to 18 months, not right now.”

A few days ago, it was also announced that del Toro is receiving a BFI Fellowship, and that he will have a BFI season in May. The director assures me that he’s already working on locating 35mm prints to screen at BFI Southbank – it’s a topic I bring up at least five times during the interview. “I’m with you [on 35mm],” he says. That’s why revival cinemas are having a boon, and regular cinemas are experiencing a bit of a plateau. In France, every time you go to a cinema, it’s much cheaper to go to a repertory cinema. You see lines around the block to see Singing in the Rain or The Maltese Falcon, and it’s mostly young people. It’s really heartening and beautiful.”

Frankenstein is streaming globally on Netflix.