Poor Test Screenings And Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein Film Cause Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Bride’ To Shift Release Dates – Budget Is Rumored To Be Overblown!
Not counting Creature Commandos, lightning was supposed to strike twice this year at the movies for the Frankenstein saga, which is usually a good thing for the tragic monster. But between underwhelming test screening reactions and competition from an Oscar-winning director with the desired imagination for fantasy, one adaptation of Mary Shelley’s lore is impacted by a distributor’s cold feet.
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That distributor is none other than our beleaguered friends at Warner Bros., and the film is The Bride, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Christian Bale as the disfigured monster stitched together from spare body parts. Word coming out of a report by Puck (via Movie Web) paints a dismal picture of the film’s future.
According to the site, which previously dished that Warner could shake the leadership at the film division up again, reactions from a recent test screening are tepid. It’s feared the “arthouse” take on the material might not be appreciated by a wide audience or appeal to horror fans. From its inception, The Bride was portrayed as “radically different,” and the words “social change” were front and center in the log line.
What we didn’t know then was that it was going to be a musical, similar to the box office dud Joker: Folie a Deux. This is complete with singing and dancing by the titular reanimated protagonist played by Jessie Buckley (Fargo). Warner must not have learned from their failure in 2024 because the news goes downhill from here and follows a familiar pattern.
The Bride looks like a modest mid-budget film, but it’s said the budget could be as high as $100 million. Although that’s half Joker 2’s price tag, it’s still too high for investors who need the Frankenstein iteration to make $200M to break even. One investor anonymously observed to Puck that Maggie Gyllenhaal shouldn’t have been entrusted with more than $15M for the project.
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Despite rave reviews for her directorial debut, 2021’s The Lost Daughter, which cost only $5M (not to mention tanked at theaters), The Bride is only Gyllenhaal’s second crack behind the camera and comes with added pressure as a quasi-remake within an established property based on an all-time classic novel.
Warner may understand this on a level contrary to their lack of guile regarding Todd Phillips, as they have moved the release date to next March. So if you want to see The Bride, you’ll have to wait a full year longer. The reason is they want to avoid competing with Del Toro’s more traditional Frankenstein story, which premieres on Netflix in November.
The Bride was originally slated for early October and then late September 2025, placing its release two months before Del Toro’s adaptation. March isn’t a better slot when you look at how Mickey 17 is doing and how Shazam: Fury of the Gods performed in ‘23. However, Warner still believes in it as a bankable month because of the successes of Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire last year.
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