{"id":144263,"date":"2025-10-25T07:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T07:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/144263\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T07:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T07:54:12","slug":"how-the-monster-was-made-to-fit-jacob-elordi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/144263\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Monster Was Made to Fit Jacob Elordi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guillermo del Toro\u2019s well-reviewed \u201cFrankenstein<\/a>\u201d is now in limited theaters from Netflix, on its way to a shoo-in surfeit of Oscar nominations, especially for its crafts. (It\u2019s also moving up in the Metacritic <\/a>rankings.) Before the film<\/a> heads to streaming on November 7, IndieWire\u2019s \u201cScreen Talk<\/a>\u201d caught up with one of the film\u2019s producers, J. Miles Dale, who joins this week\u2019s episode as a special guest. Dale won the Best Picture Oscar in 2018 for producing \u201cThe Shape of Water\u201d and also oversaw del Toro\u2019s noir remake of \u201cNightmare Alley\u201d (2021) as well as the del Toro-produced \u201cScary Stories to Tell in the Dark\u201d (2019).<\/p>\n

On this week\u2019s episode, Anne Thompson is fresh back from the Middleburg Film Festival in Virginia, which showed the importance of regional festivals<\/a> as a building block to Oscar nominations. (Many of the awards<\/a>-prognosticating cabal, including IndieWire\u2019s Marcus Jones, were on the ground also.) Audience prizes<\/a> went to Focus Features\u2019 \u201cHamnet\u201d from Chlo\u00e9 Zhao and Searchlight\u2019s \u201cRental Family\u201d from HIKARI, both Oscar contenders as we head deeper into the season.<\/p>\n

\"Linda<\/a> \"TELLURIDE,<\/a> <\/p>\n

Co-host Ryan Lattanzio previews AFI Fest, now underway in Los Angeles through the weekend and featuring films from \u201cSpringsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere\u201d (which brought The Boss himself for a performance at Hollywood and Highland) to the world premiere of \u201cSong Sung Blue\u201d and beloved indies like Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid\u2019s audacious \u201cYes\u201d and Max Silverman-Walker\u2019s plaintive Josh O\u2019Connor vehicle \u201cRebuilding.\u201d <\/p>\n

Recently, IndieWire tapped the AFI Fest programming team<\/a> to share their picks for the best films to see.<\/p>\n

Our special guest, producer Dale,\u00a0has been working with Guillermo del Toro since he produced \u201cMama\u201d (2013), which marked the directing debut of Andy Muschietti. He produced the FX series \u201cThe Strain\u201d for four years, as well. Two period films, Best Picture Oscar winner \u201cThe Shape of Water\u201d and Best Picture nominee \u201cNightmare Alley,\u201d prepared Dale and his team for the daunting task of delivering del Toro\u2019s two white whale movies: \u201cPinocchio\u201d and \u201cFrankenstein<\/a>,\u201d with a budget of $120 million, both backed by Netflix. <\/p>\n

Del Toro saw James Whale\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d when he was seven and read Mary Shelley\u2019s classic when he was 11, said Dale. They discussed the film for years, as many potential backers passed on it. \u201cWhen we realized we were going to do it,\u201d said Dale, \u201cwe knew it was a hill to climb.\u201d That\u2019s because the project was weighted with expectations. Del Toro had been thinking about it for a long time, and the bar was high.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"FRANKENSTEIN.Cinematographer Dan Laustsen, Mia Goth as Elizabeth, and Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein on the set of \u2018Frankenstein\u2019Ken Woroner\/Netflix<\/p>\n

Luckily, it was not Dale\u2019s first go-round. \u201cMy muscles and our collaborators\u2019 stretched nicely to be ready for it,\u201d he said. Del Toro\u2019s philosophy of filmmaking: There are four legs. Costume design, production design, cinematography, and hair and makeup all work together, from color coding and contrasts to lighting.<\/p>\n

The ball got rolling with Guy Davis, Del Toro\u2019s longtime concept designer, as well as Bernie Wrightson\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d book\u00a0illustrations<\/a>. As always, Del Toro gave his team \u201clots to look at,\u201d said Dale. \u201cEveryone comes together. Del Toro is a craft junkie. We made fabrics, the paint department was meticulous, the moss squad was laying moss. It got granular in terms of design.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest glitch came nine weeks out when Andrew Garfield fell out of availability. All the creature designs were customized to his face and body. Replacement Jacob Elordi was 6-feet-6-inches tall, which was a challenge for body sculptor Mike Hill, who had sculpted 42 pieces for Garfield. Elordi had wanted to play the creature, and here brings enormous empathy to him. But he had been playing a World War II prisoner in Justin Kurzel\u2019s series \u201cThe Narrow Road to the Deep North\u201d and had lost tons of weight. Now, he had \u201cto stuff his face with pizzas to be a big strong monster,\u201d said Dale. \u201cIt was something different every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the start of the movie, Elordi as the black-caped creature is convincingly large and terrifying. The production set up on a frozen lake a few hours north of Toronto, where Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) arrives on a sled, facing driving snow (blown by giant Volkswagen engines). The 19th-century sailing ship with authentic rigging was built in a parking lot outside their Toronto studio, with an ice esplanade to get up to it. \u201cIt was 130 feet long and had to hold 100 or more people, sailors and crew,\u201d said Dale. When you see the\u00a0creature fall into the lake, it\u2019s a tank. And when he pushes the ship, \u201cit\u2019s for real. The ship is on a giant gimbal. It was a major engineering project. It makes your brain hurt some days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Frankenstein'\"\u2018Frankenstein\u2019Netflix<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s other design feat was Frankenstein\u2019s lab. They built a water tower comprised of eight different sets. \u201cThe giant exterior was built on the fairground, where we made the carnival for \u2018Nightmare Alley,’\u201d said Dale. \u201cThe foyer lobby set, the lab, in its various evolutions, visitors\u2019 quarters, the top of the tower, and where he climbs to the top, the monster lair, and the escape water chute, which is not such a subtle metaphor for a birth canal. The exterior, which took four months to build and we shot for three days, provided the base for the tower.\u201d Finally, there were also handmade miniatures. Del Toro tries to minimize the use of CG in order to emphasize the craft. <\/p>\n

The final cut is two and a half hours, whittled down from over three hours. There was talk of two movies, but they decided to stick to one. It was important to del Toro to be faithful to the original Shelley. \u201cHe does identify with monsters,\u201d said Dale. \u201cHe wanted to make sure to get the creature\u2019s point of view. That\u2019s unique about our film. He speaks and articulates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to this week\u2019s episode below or on your favorite podcast platform.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guillermo del Toro\u2019s well-reviewed \u201cFrankenstein\u201d is now in limited theaters from Netflix, on its way to a shoo-in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[4648,18,117,597,11489,19,17,327,1113,85235],"class_list":{"0":"post-144263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-frankenstein","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-podcasts","17":"tag-screen-talk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115433731904487914","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}