Andrew Garfield dropped out and Jacob Elordi became del Toro’s Frankenstein

Jacob Elordi may be the most haunting Frankenstein’s monster yet but not for the reasons you’d expect. Just nine weeks before filming began on Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein, Andrew Garfield abruptly dropped out, forcing a last-minute scramble that led to Elordi’s casting. What followed was a complete overhaul of nine months of prosthetic design, character planning, and performance direction, all reimagined around a new kind of monster: one stitched from sorrow and startling beauty.

Del Toro, whose films are drenched in gothic myth and moral anguish, saw Garfield’s exit as a blessing in disguise. “Jacob is the most perfect actor for the creature,” he said, describing their immediate creative connection. On set, del Toro directed Elordi to move like a lost disciple, asking him to pray, not rage. The monster, once seen as violent and broken, now becomes something tragic and divine, less a brute, more a forsaken son.

The film is steeped in religious and romantic imagery, unfolding inside a decaying cathedral-like lab. Oscar Isaac plays Dr Frankenstein with clinical remorse, hacking at corpses as if performing penance. Mia Goth lingers with ghostly quiet, hiding her own motives. But it's Elordi, draped in candlelight, wearing the weight of abandonment, who emerges as del Toro’s most emotional creation.

Makeup artist Mike Hill called Elordi a dream fit: “His wrists, his gangliness, his eyes… there’s a softness inside the menace.” And yet the scale of the man is what haunts: six-foot-five, all fragile grace and silent threat. “He could do a lot of damage,” Hill added, “if he really wanted to be a bad guy.”

With Frankenstein premiering at Venice before a Netflix release, all eyes are on Elordi, the accidental monster born from Garfield’s ghost.