Guillermo del Toro Eyes The Phantom of the Opera After Finally Unleashing Frankenstein

It took a long and winding road — roughly three decades of stop-and-go development — but Guillermo del Toro has finally brought Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the screen, and now the Oscar-winning filmmaker is already casting his eye toward another Gothic giant. In a recent sit-down with Inverse, del Toro was asked which "misunderstood villain" he would like to tackle next. His answer? Gaston Leroux's masked maestro of the Palais Garnier.

"The Phantom of the Opera, because it's such a classic tale, but I would do it differently," del Toro said, keeping his cards close to his chest. "I have a couple of ideas, but for now, I'm going into crime and stop-motion." That last remark appears to nod to projects already locked in rather than a puppet-string rendition of the Paris Opera House — though, knowing del Toro, a stop-motion Phantom is hardly outside the realm of possibility.

Frankenstein Has Finally Left the Lab

The director's long-gestating Frankenstein, starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, has already rolled out in theaters and landed on Netflix on November 7, giving subscribers a front-row seat to del Toro's grand, gothic take on Shelley's milestone novel. For a filmmaker who has been champing at the bit to adapt the book since his teenage years, it's a dream come true — and critics have largely agreed the wait was worth it.

With that particular monster finally off his plate, the cupboard is anything but bare. Del Toro is writing and directing an adaptation of Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro's dark fantasy novel The Buried Giant, and he is also teaming up with Isaac once again for a fresh crime thriller. In other words, the man is busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

Why the Phantom Fits Like a Glove

Leroux's 1909 novel is set in late 19th-century Paris and centers on Christine, a young and largely unknown soprano scraping by in the chorus of the Palais Garnier Opera House. Unbeknownst to her, she has been secretly coached by a mysterious figure dwelling beneath the opera — a disfigured genius who both engineers her meteoric rise and harbors a dangerously obsessive fixation on her.

It is, in many ways, cut from the same cloth as del Toro's best work: a tragic outsider, a lush period setting, and a love story curdling into something far darker. Small wonder the director is itching to put his own stamp on it.

The Rights Question and a Shelved Lovecraft Dream

There is a catch, as there always is. Securing the rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber's blockbuster stage musical would be a legal headache of epic proportions, so del Toro's scattered comments suggest he may be leaning toward a direct adaptation of Leroux's novel instead — which, conveniently, sits in the public domain. The most famous screen version remains the 2004 film starring Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum, itself spun off from the Broadway juggernaut, so there is plenty of room for a darker, stranger interpretation.

Meanwhile, del Toro's long-gestating take on H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness appears to have been left out in the cold. The filmmaker recently conceded that he doesn't think "people are lining up to do" the sci-fi horror novella — a candid admission that, if nothing else, clears the decks for a Phantom project with a far more straightforward narrative to bring to the big screen.

The Ball Is in His Court

Nothing is official yet, and fans would be wise not to count their chickens before they hatch. But the pairing of del Toro and the Phantom is a match made in gothic heaven, and the director has never been shy about wearing his obsessions on his sleeve. Whether it arrives in two years or ten, a del Toro-helmed Phantom of the Opera sounds like a very promising prospect indeed — and horror devotees will be keeping their fingers firmly crossed. 🎭🕯️",

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