Writer/director Guillermo del Toro had long wanted to adapt Mary Shelley's seminal novel "Frankenstein" to the big screen. Seeing the Karloff film and subsequently reading the novel at a very young age was a defining experience for del Toro, both in his personal development, and in his artistic taste and ambitions. Throughout his whole career, this adaptation remained the director's dream project, and one whose seeds can be seen planted throughout almost every one of his movies to date. The adaptation was in talks around various studios off and on for years, eventually taking its final form at Netflix. Though del Toro's adaptation largely follows the core of the book, it is not a strictly literal adaptation, with the script removing and adding some characters, and making some significant deviations in the ending of the story, adding a heavy dose of Mexican Catholicism and parenting metaphors. The film received a criminally restricted theatrical distribution, and then got wide release on the streaming platform several weeks later in the fall of 2025. Critical and audience reactions were largely positive, though some quibbled with the deviations from the source material. In the hands of the modern master of monsters, this isn't a horror movie at all, but a tragic Gothic romance, one that is immaculately crafted, thanks to the director's passion for ornate, functional sets, practical make-up and stunts, and exquisite costume design and set decoration.
Reuniting with the director is French composer Alexandre Desplat, who scored his previous two films as well. Originally the director requested music in a baroque style, but the composer argued that music that was too period-specific, or played the Gothic horror angle too directly wouldn't work. Instead, Desplat crafted a thoughtful and often romantic and melancholic sound, at times delicate as a feather (featuring crystalline violin solos by Elbjørg Hemsing) and Desplat's trademark waltzes, but one that also erupts into moments of grand fury and epic mayhem when needed. The score is built around a main theme that doubles as Victor's melody, and many different melodic lines stem from this thematic core. The themes often seem to be tied more to conceptual themes, rather than strict character leitmotifs, with a few ideas for the Creature, Victor's relationship to his mother and Elizabeth, scientific obsession/Harlander, and the Dark Angel that represents Victor's obsession with overcoming death. In the end, the score is not what one might first imagine for a classic Frankenstein film, but it is one of the composer's most ambitious scores, and perfectly tailored to del Toro's theatrical and compassionate storytelling.
The score album was released on streaming by Netflix Music, a long album featuring the majority of the score. As a huge del Toro and Desplat fan, I wanted to tackle this project right away, though the release had its share of frustrations. The ultra limited theatrical release meant there was not a lot of artwork out initially, as a very few people got to see the film in its initial run. Also, what is becoming a major curse for designers like me in this modern age of streaming cinema is that most marketing campaigns are only geared toward social media platforms, and not more old-fashioned theatrical marketing. This means that artwork available online is extremely limited. Major artwork sometimes never receives full width, textless versions (which is usually fairly standard from major studio releases). This means having to majorly up-rez fairly low quality artwork and lots of painting out of text and titles.
In the end, I chose a limited number from the already fairly small selection of official artwork, but thankfully where social media did come in handy was for discovering a whole plethora of fan-created illustrations. I combed Instagram and other platforms for weeks, the film was quite popular with a certain crowd, with tons of fan art being generated once the film caught a wider audience, though again, I'm fairly selective in terms of what I personally think could work well for cover art and represents the style of the film overall. So here's a total of thirty-one covers--one of my largest sets yet.
Covers 1 - 11 use officially sourced artwork, either studio marketing or licensed pieces.
The first 8 covers are all Netflix advertising material. Many had to be enlarged, with multiple images sometimes patched together to cover over text.
Cover 9 uses the cover of the "Art of" book, though cut down to fit cover size.
Cover 10 uses a stunning illustration by artist James Jean, which was used for the film's limited IMAX release. Figuring out how to edit such an ornate and detailed piece of art is challenging, I toyed around with a few versions, but in the end, shifted things high enough, but had to paint out some bits of the angel at the top (sadly lost here), and paint out the title to shift that lower in the image, as well as moving Victor's mother's coffin in the lower left a bit higher for better framing.
Cover 11 adapts the vinyl album cover created by Made by Mutant records. The illustration is by comic-book artist Francesco Francavilla. I simply painted out the text and made some alterations to the title and text placement to be a bit more legible as a CD album cover (as opposed to vinyl covers that often have microscopic text when viewed digitally, due to the large real estate that they have to work with). All credit to Francavilla and the Mutant team here for the incredible design here, simply wanted to make the awesome piece a bit more accessible for online users.
The rest of the covers are all sourced from artwork I found online, many of which were new artists to me, but it was a fun challenge to comb the internet and find the best of the best (at least those which suited my specific purposes and tastes here).
Cover 12 uses a dramatic piece art by Danny Achmad. I simply shrunk the lower right corner down and up a bit to better frame Elizabeth and the Creature in the available crop.
Cover 13 uses a Klimpt-esque piece by Naomi Dale, to which I just added a bit more space on the top edge to fit my text. There were endless variations online on the theme of Gothic romance involving Elizabeth and the Creature, so I had to be picky with which ones I still felt were true to the film overall, and not just wandering into pure fan-fic/romance territory.
Cover 14 features a piece by UK horror illustrator Chris Barnes, more of a teaser image, but one that is haunting and more minimal.
Cover 15 features art by Alex Craiu. Little editing was required, I just faded out the bottom to make the text easier to read. I especially love the two angels at the top.
Cover 16 uses an early piece of art I found, by user alvarojh.0.
Cover 17 features an illustration by Berkay Daglar, a bit more stylized, but I loved the colors and dynamic composition. I had to make some edits to fit the essential bits into my crop, including moving Victor, Harlander and the batteries up and a bit to the left, and editing the gold frame to fit the new edit.
Cover 18 uses a fun digital painting by Jesus Gonzalo, to which I just slid the bottom half of the image a bit higher up and then cut and blended to smooth it all back in.
Cover 19 uses a lovely illustration, mimicking a pencil style, by fantasy illustrator Tatiana Anor.
Cover 20 uses a fun Gothic poster created by Alessandro Moltalto and Jaime Venture. I again shifted the lower characters up, and then the bottom batteries in the lower corners even further up to fit nicely into the edge, and blended all in as seamlessly as possible.
Cover 21 uses a lovely piece by Krishna Bala Shenoi from the Creature's catharsis at the end of the film.
Cover 22 features an illustration by LERA, it stands out quite nicely from the other designs, and nice to see more of the Creature's early bald, statuesque look.
Cover 23 uses a fun illustration by Polina, whose illustration style seems to blend the Victorian with a bit of touch of anime, but I loved all the architectural framing overall Gothic style. I moved Victor and the bottom half up significantly and then matted and blended in all the piping to line back up.
Cover 24 uses a great illustration by Dennis Pineda. I just expanded the top a bit to allow the text, but I love the dramatic use of color and featuring the Red Angel.
Cover 25 uses a stunning piece by Rafal Rola, in a lovely vintage art nouveau style, to which I just created a tighter crop on the bottom.
Cover 26 features a fantastic design by Audrey Estok, this was one of the first fan images I saw online, before the film even hit streaming, but it perfectly captures the colors and symbolism of the film, and still remains a very unique take on the material. Editing took a bit of work, as I had to paint out text, and then shifted Victor's iconic red gloves a fair bit higher in the image, then had to carefully shape-matte it out, cut out spaces for the electricity rods and blend the background.
Cover 27 and 28 features two designs by Nuno Sarnadas, both highlighting the strong Catholic imagery of the cruciform shape of the Creature's resurrection bench. The second specifically pays homage to Salvador Dali's Christ of St. John on the Cross, to which I simply raised the sky in the lower portion of the image up.
Cover 29 features another illustration by Juan Carlos Ruiz Burgos. More a teaser image than a full poster, but I knew I had to include it in my collection. Editing was a bit tricky in terms of figuring out how to configure the bottom of the image and the text, I shifted the bottom frame up and used the cleaner parchment to lighten up the bottom of the Creature's body, leaving space for the title.
Cover 30 showcases more stunning work from Denver Balbaboco. His painterly style is just so stunning and life-like. Little editing was required, just trying to get out of the artwork's way as much as possible.
Finally Cover 31 is a last extra treat, a bit of an original edit, for those who like more minimal covers. I wanted to showcase this incredible design from the set of Victor's laboratory. I couldn't find any hi-rez still or official marketing imagery using the Medusa head, so I tried to concoct my own using a super tiny image I found (that I believe was sourced from a small diorama used for an interview marketing stage). I up-rezzed the image, overlaid several rocky textures to try to give it a bit more detail and then edited the colors and added some vignetting effects.
Hope you enjoy the collection, and as always, I'd love to hear about your favorite selections below!
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