Exclusive: Andrew Garfield Cast As Frankenstein Monster In Guillermo Del Toro Movie
Andrew Garfield will portray the monster alongside Oscar Isaac's doctor in Guillermo del Toro's version of Frankenstein.
Andrew Garfield has been cast as the iconic monster in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein movie, which is being produced as part of the filmmaker’s overall deal with Netflix. According to our trusted and proven sources, the Spider-Man actor is joining the project alongside fellow Marvel actor Oscar Isaac, who will be portraying the titular doctor. It is currently unknown whether Guillermo del Toro’s film will be a direct adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original 1818 novel or one of the many, many different takes on the source material Hollywood has produced over the years.
Both Andrew Garfield and Guillermo del Toro have successful existing relationships with Netflix, which makes the two partnering on Frankenstein a pretty reasonable pairing. Guillermo del Toro’s last two projects have both been for the streaming platform: the anthology series Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities and his stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio. Both projects received significant critical acclaim, with the former featuring the work of a number of interesting filmmakers and the latter largely being considered the best of the three different Pinocchio adaptations of 2022.
For his part, Andrew Garfield can thank Netflix for the beginning of his recent, post-Amazing Spider-Man comeback, so it is no surprise he would be up for Frankenstein. In 2021, Garfield portrayed Rent playwright Jonathan Larson in the biopic musical tick, tick…BOOM!, directed by Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda. The role earned him a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination, setting the ground for a reconsideration of his much-maligned turn as Peter Parker, and currently, he seems to be riding a groundswell of public adoration.
The idea of Guillermo del Toro, Oscar Isaac, and Andrew Garfield collaborating on a Frankenstein movie has a lot of potential, especially as the filmmaker seems to be in a rare productive mode at the moment. He has already announced a stop-motion adaption of Kazuo Ishigoro’s novel The Buried Giant, so Andrew Garfield’s Frankenstein would presumably be a project following that. However, there is the unfortunate truth that del Toro has a tendency to announce projects that never get made.
When there is an entire, extensive Wikipedia page to indicate that a filmmaker has a lot of unrealized projects, it makes it likely that any film they announce might not actually get produced. Guillermo del Toro has been publicly discussing plans to make a Frankenstein since at least 2014, but hopefully, with the backing of Netflix, he can get it done this time.
Currently, Andrew Garfield is scheduled to appear as controversial billionaire Richard Branson in the movie Hot Air for his next project, so we hope Frankenstein is currently emerging from its unholy development process as we speak. While Frankenstein may be in the public domain, much of the public image of the creature is rooted in Universal Pictures’ hulking, bolt-necked version of the character and thus inaccessible, so it will be interesting to see what Garfield, Isaac, and Del Toro make of one of the most famous monsters of all time.
