The Bride!

A 2026 horror film with a dramatic and romantic line, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who also wrote the screenplay and produced. The story goes back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which a scientist assembles a living being out of dead matter and the creature then demands that a mate be made for it. On screen the line was fixed by James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein of 1935: the revived companion rejects the one she was made for, and the horror of the story falls on that refusal. The action takes place in America in the 1930s, the very years in which Whale was working, and the setting itself nods to the screen original. Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley take the leading parts, with Penélope Cruz, Annette Bening, Peter Sarsgaard, Julianne Hough, John Magaro, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeannie Berlin, Linda Emond and Matthew Maher alongside them. For Maggie Gyllenhaal, who came to directing from acting, this is a second feature after The Lost Daughter, adapted from the novel by Elena Ferrante. The score is by Hildur Gudnadottir. Osnat Handelsman-Keren, Talia Kleinhendler and Emma Tillinger Koskoff produced alongside the director. The novel by Mary Shelley appeared in 1818, and the story has been retold on stage, on screen and in comics ever since. The film opened in cinemas on 26 February 2026 and reached other territories on 5 and 6 March. Reception was divided: some reviewers praised the director's design and the film's open love of cinema itself, while others called the execution muddled. At the box office it failed outright, taking back only a small part of what it cost.