Guillermo del Toro, the legendary director and filmmaker known for his acclaimed films like four time Academy Award winner The Shape of Water, and three time academy award winner Pan’s Labyrinth. The Shape of Water is set to be honored at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal with an outdoor screening of film as part of the festival’s 50th anniversary this summer. The festival, famous for celebrating genre cinema, especially fantasy and horror, would not be the same without Del Toro. Fantasia has continuously praised him as “a shrine to all geeks and a feast for those who love things completely unlovable to the most.”

As part of the honor, Del Toro will also host a special screening of his new film, Frankenstein, which is scheduled to be released worldwide on Netflix in November 2025. The adaptation is based on Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 novel. Leading the cast is Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, followed by Jacob Elordi as the Monster, and Christoph Waltz as Dr. Pretorious. The story sticks to the novel’s setting, taking place in 19th-century Eastern Europe, and follows Dr. Pretorious’s journey to locate Frankenstein’s Monster—who was believed to have perished in a fire almost forty years earlier—in order to continue Frankenstein’s experiments.

Del Toro has hinted that the film is an untraditional horror story, intertwined with what he calls an “incredibly emotional story,” stressing its lyrical and emotional depth. The film’s score will be composed by Alexandre Desplat, known for his frequent collaborations with Wes Anderson and also a longtime friend of Del Toro, having worked with him on The Shape of Water. Desplat hopes the score will complement the film’s tone—gothic yet ethereal. Filming wrapped in September of 2024, to get the gothic features they filmed in Toronto and Edinburgh.

The Fantasia International Film Festival, founded in 1996, has grown into one of North America’s most prestigious genre film festivals, spotlighting films that are apart of genres in horror, science fiction, and fantasy.