Intro for August 22, 2025

Dear Gossips,  

The Venice Film Festival begins next week, followed by the Telluride Film Festival over the US Labor Day weekend, and then TIFF launches on September 4. We’re on the cusp of the fall festival season, which means the 2025 awards season is about to begin. 

To that end, promotional campaigns are starting in earnest, including the festival tour of Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. It will world premiere at Venice before playing TIFF, and stars Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi cover Variety this week ahead of its Venice premiere on August 30.

This co-interview with Isaac is the most charming I have ever found Elordi. It certainly doesn’t hurt that he is promoting a serious film made by an Oscar-winning filmmaker, widely regarded as a modern master, and is co-starring with equally admired actor Oscar Isaac. No silly teen rom-com this! Frankenstein is real cinema for real cinema geeks! Seriously, though, through the interview you do get a sense that Elordi went through it to play Frankenstein’s monster, a process involving ten hours of makeup, and he does seem to still be amazed by the experience. 

When I say Elordi seems humbled by the experience, I don’t mean in the sense of bringing down his ego, or making him smaller in any way, but that it seems like he has a true appreciation for what he accomplished and the experience he got to have working with Del Toro. Again, this is the most likeable I’ve found him ever, and it is in no small part because he is showing enthusiasm for his work, not disdain. For his part, Oscar Isaac is always a charming rascal, and he speaks of Frankenstein as the culmination of a long friendship with Del Toro.

It's also the culmination of thirty years of effort on Del Toro’s part, as Frankenstein was one of his “bucket list” projects he brought to Netflix as part of an overall deal with the streamer. The budget is reported at $120 million, a huge amount for any film, but most especially one with only a three-week theatrical run. As is always the case with Netflix’s Oscar bait, Frankenstein will play for three weeks in theaters beginning on November 17, before debuting on the streamer on December 7. Elordi and Isaac both talk about their desire for people to see Frankenstein in theaters. “My great hope is that we get this film in cinemas for as long as possible. And then, hopefully, that can set a precedent for more films out there,” Elordi says, followed by Isaac chiming in, “It is gonna go to the theater for a while.”

It's going to be in theaters for three weeks. Three weeks is not “a while” in movie distribution terms. They need one week in theaters to qualify for the Oscars, the other two weeks are to make filmmakers like Del Toro happy. And no matter how well it does in theaters, Netflix will not extend the run, we already learned that with Glass Onion, which was doing so well in 2022 theater owners were calling Netflix to extend the run and Netflix said no. They are not in the theatrical business, full stop. They put movies like Frankenstein in a few hundred theaters for a few weeks to keep top-tier filmmakers on side, the end. 

But maybe KPop Demon Hunters can move the needle? It is playing in 1,700 theaters this weekend for sing-a-long screenings, and based on pre-sales, it is projected to make $15 million. That’s a wide release by any standard, let alone Netflix’s stingy standard. And that is a respectable box office haul for a film that has been viewable at home for weeks and is essentially doing fan service screenings.

I once asked a Netflix flak why filmmakers like Del Toro keep making deals with them, knowing Netflix is not in the theatrical business, and she said it’s because they all think they’re going to be the special snowflake that changes minds and leads Netflix into proper theatrical distribution. So far, not even Martin F-cking Scorsese could do that, but maybe an animated movie about a KPop group fighting monsters set to a kicky soundtrack can do what Scorsese, Jane Campion, Del Toro, Rian Johnson, the Coen Brothers, and Bong Joon-ho have not been able to do—get Netflix to see the value of theatrical distribution. 

Live long and gossip,

Sarah