Warner Bros. dropped the first trailer for The Bride! today, finally giving audiences a proper look at Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ambitious reimagining of the Frankenstein story.
The preview shows us Christian Bale’s turn as the Monster and Jessie Buckley as his reanimated bride in 1930s Chicago, complete with period details, tons of crime, and gothic romance.
The film’s official synopsis reads:
“A lonely Frankenstein travels to 1930s Chicago to seek the aid of a Dr. Euphronius in creating a companion for himself. The two reinvigorate a murdered young woman and the Bride is born. She is beyond what either of them intended, igniting a combustible romance, the attention of the police and a wild and radical social movement.”
Check it out.
– YouTube www.youtube.com
The trailer itself offers glimpses of the film’s scope, with Buckley’s character falling down a flight of stairs to her death, followed by scenes of her resurrection.
But while the trailer showcases Gyllenhaal’s ambition, the film arrives amid industry whispers. Earlier this year, reports surfaced about problematic test screenings. The Bride! is said to have scored low with audiences, which led Warner Bros. to enter the editing room in an attempt to shape the film, according to World of Reel.
The film represents a big leap for Gyllenhaal, whose only previous directorial effort is the intimate, $5 million Netflix drama The Lost Daughter. That one earned her Oscar recognition, but moving from chamber piece to blockbuster is a different challenge.
As Variety noted during CinemaCon, after The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal wanted her next movie to be “pop, big and radical.”
Originally set up at Netflix, the film moved to Warner Bros. after budget disagreements, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, co-chairs and CEOs of the Warner Bros. motion picture unit, “stepped in to foot the bill” after Netflix.
The film also faces the challenge of competing against Guillermo del Toro’s Netflix version of Frankenstein, creating the unique situation where two major adaptations will arrive within months of each other.
Other adaptations, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with Kenneth Branagh and Robert De Niro, and Victor Frankenstein with Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy, have struggled at the box office and with critics. So, no telling how these new ones will do, although they both seem new and edgy in their own ways.
San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle captured the film’s high-risk, high-reward nature.
“It’s conventional to say of a movie that hasn’t yet been released that it could turn out great or horrible. But in the case of The Bride, great or horrible—and nothing in between—might be the only two possibilities.”
We’re cautiously optimistic over here with all the Bonnie and Clyde, Fincher, and Harley Quinn vibes the trailer gives. What do you think?