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Guillermo del Toro Would Love To Adapt This 116-Year-Old Story After His Sci-Fi Horror Remake With 86% on RT
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is now in theaters and while fans had to wait a long time for the legendary filmmaker’s passion project to arrive, it’s proving to be worth the wait. The film is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86% Tomatometer and an even higher audience rating, receiving much praise for his grand and complex adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic horror novel. Yet, even with Frankenstein in theaters and headed to Netflix on November 7, the filmmaker’s fans are already curious about what he will do next and while there are some projects in the pipeline, he’s also revealed another horror tale he’d love to take a crack at.
Speaking with Inverse, del Toro noted that he does have some confirmed projects in the works but also noted that he would like to do his own take on Gaston Leroux’s 1909 novel The Phantom of the Opera. De Toro also said that if he were to take on the story, it’s something that he would do differently — potentially the way he approached the Creature in Frankenstein.
“The Phantom of the Opera, because it’s such a classic tale, but I would do it differently,” del Toro said when asked which misunderstood villain, he would like to do next. “I have a couple of ideas, but for now, I’m going into crime and stop-motion.”
A del Toro Phantom of the Opera Wouldn’t Be Anything Like the Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical
While it might surprise some fans to hear del Toro say that he’d like to try his hand at The Phantom of the Opera, the filmmaker is likely not talking about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s wildly popular musical adaptation. While Webber’s Phantom of the Opera is very popular and known around the world thanks to its massively successful stage run that has lasted for decades, Leroux’s novel is actually quite different. The novel is more of a gothic mystery rather than a romantic drama and unfolds more like a mystery offering various perspectives. The primary characters in Leroux’s story are also a bit different, with the young musician Christine Daae being more passive and more naive while the Phantom is more of a madman obsessed with her. It is, in many respects a more tense but also tragic story than the love triangle portrayed in the musical.
With how del Toro has made Shelley’s Frankenstein his own with some key changes to the story — specifically the change in Dr. Frankenstein’s love life as well as the ending of the story — it’s not unreasonable to think that the filmmaker would also make some shifts to Leroux’s story should he actually adapt it. One of the things that makes Frankenstein stand out is how he humanized the Creature as well as restored Victor Frankenstein to a tragic villain. It’s something that made the whole story a bit sadder but also a big more grounded. Given that del Toro sees the Phantom as a “misunderstood villain”, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him do the same thing, perhaps expanding on the tragic tale in a way that makes him more three dimensional than merely a lovesick obsessed man.
However, while the idea of a del Toro Phantom of the Opera is enticing, fans probably shouldn’t get too excited just yet. Among his upcoming projects are the stop-motion film The Buried Giant. Del Toro has also previously indicated that he wants to move away from live-action films altogether to do animation, though he did say that he has a few more live-action films left that he wants to do. It remains to be seen if Phantom of the Opera is one of them.
Frankenstein is in theaters now.
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