Maggie Gyllenhaal has a new Frankenstein movie coming out in 2026 called The Bride!, and she is promoting some of her visual decisions for the new monster. Just months after Guillermo del Toro released his new Frankenstein movie, Gyllenhaal has her own film coming out with a very different creature, and it focuses on the Bride of Frankenstein, rather than the original monster. While the trailers have been out for a few months now, Gyllenhaal has been discussing the new film as the release date grows near, and she is discussing how she made her main character look in the movie.
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ComicBook attended a Q&A event that Maggie Gyllenhaal was at, and she talked a little at the event about Jessie Buckley’s Bride’s appearance. “Okay, so the smudge, yeah, I mean, I was working with such incredible people,” Gyllenhall explained. I was working with Jessie, of course. I, again, as an actress, really believe that it’s a collaboration, right? It’s my mind, my ideas, mixed with Jessie’s, mixed with our makeup artist, Nadia Stacey. And so we let it emerge.”
The director then joked that the inky tar smudge on her face is part of the formula that brings her back to life. “I love the visual of that and the aspect of that,” she continued. “And also to veer, just a second, off the smudge, our incredible production designer, Karen Murphy, designed this lab, which I think you get a piece of seeing Euphronios’s lab.” She then pointed out that the lab has tubes full of black stuff that comes out of plastic wires and into her arms. “we were like, well, what’s the result of that? … In what way could it stain her skin that would be graphic, that would be gorgeous, that would appeal to us both from a makeup standpoint, a style standpoint and a story standpoint? And I think that’s what we did.”
On top of the explanation about the black smudge (which Gullenhall also said was a spoiler about what it really is), she spoke about the exclamation point at the end of the movie’s title, The Bride! She explained it was part of the idea that this woman was angry that she never had any agency in life or death. “I think if you are The Bride who plays a woman in 1936 who died not having gotten herself expressed at all, then maybe when you come back to life, you have a backlog of so many things that you need to get said,” Gyllenhaal said. “Of course, you’ll see as you watch the movie that The Bride also has access to other people’s backlogs of things that they need to get said; it comes out with an exclamation point attached to it when it finally gets to come out.”
How Will Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Franekstein Differ From Guillermo del Toro’s?
The biggest difference between The Bride! and Frankenstein is that this is a story about the Bride herself, and it is a feminist tale of a woman who died and was brought back and forced into a relationship with a monster she wanted nothing to do with (played by Christian Bale). This is a movie that has a very angry Bride who wants to lash out at the unfair society that didn’t care about her when she was alive and only wants to control her after her death.
It is similar to Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, as his Monster was also someone who was created to serve and only wanted to find his freedom and love. However, while Del Toro created a throwback monster movie with a sympathetic creature at its core, The Bride! is about a woman who finally fights back against a male-dominated society, a very unique remake of a 91-year-old horror classic. The Bride! comes out in theaters on March 6, 2026.
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Image Courtesy of Prime Video
