“Some of what I will tell you is fact,” Oscar Isaac intones in the opening moments of the new teaser trailer for Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro’s highly anticipated Frankenstein adaptation, which premiered on May 31 at Netflix Tudum 2025: The Live Event. “Some is not. But it is all true.” The truth of this particular tale is in the eye of the beholder — whether that’s the eye of Victor Frankenstein (Isaac), or the misbegotten creature (Jacob Elordi) he’s created. You can see the full teaser above.

“This has been, for me, the culmination of a journey that has occupied most of my life,” del Toro told the crowd during the live event. “I first read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a kid and saw [star of the 1931 adaptation] Boris Karloff in, what became for me, an almost religious state. Monsters have become my personal belief system.” 

Del Toro may have been dreaming of Mary Shelley’s classic monster since childhood, but it took him decades to finally adapt the novel in earnest. In the interim, the iconography of the beloved tale seeped into the rest of del Toro’s filmography — think of the lightning-infused birth of Pinocchio in his 2022 Oscar winner Pinocchio, or the wounded humanity of Ron Perlman’s monstrous Hellboy. “Exploring the relationship between humanity and monsters, creator and creation, father and son has consumed my stories again and again,” he said on stage at Tudum 2025. “I wanted to make this film before even I had a camera, and I’ve been actively pursuing it now for 25 years.”

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Now, that continuum of influence has been reversed. Fans of del Toro’s work will note plenty of familiar imagery in the new teaser, from Isaac’s Victor standing on a decaying staircase holding a candelabra (see: Crimson Peak) to a blood-red angelic figure surrounded in flames (see: the Angel of Death in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the blue Wood Sprite and the sphinxlike Death in Pinocchio, and even the Faun in Pan’s Labyrinth). 

For Isaac, playing the part of Victor Frankenstein has been “the experience of a lifetime. The passion, the love, and dedication we’ve all put into this movie is reflected in every frame,” said the actor during the live event. “This film stands on the shoulders of every creature feature, but it is a dark and sumptuous emotional drama — a character piece sprung from the pages of Mary Shelley’s classic novel.”

Mia Goth, who plays Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s fiancée, “couldn’t wait to dive in” when she heard del Toro was adapting the classic novel. “I love material like this, and it all started with the book,” she said. 

Elordi also praised the director. “Guillermo is a real-life genius, and I am immensely grateful to be in the film and really proud of the work that we all put into it,” he said.

The teaser promises Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, filtered through the lens of Guillermo del Toro on the grandest canvas imaginable. We can’t wait to see what new angles the celebrated filmmaker discovers. 

Frankenstein arrives on Netflix in November. You can read more about the film right here.