Billboard Women in Music 2025
It’s alive!
“The Bride!,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s punk rock take on Frankenstein’s monster and his betrothed, debuted a terrifying first look at CinemaCon on Tuesday as part of Warner Bros.’ presentation to theater owners. The $90 million-budgeted film stars Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s monster and Jessie Buckley as his undead love interest. Based on the footage that Gyllenhaal shared, their marriage is one that’s made in hell. After all, the movie’s newly revealed tagline is “Here comes the mother fucking bride.”
The gruesome first look, which hasn’t been made available to the public, opens with Buckley’s character falling down a staircase and breaking her bones as she lands sprawled out on the floor. She finds herself on the operating table, getting patched up, but only to function as a companion for a certain someone.
“It wasn’t any accident,” a voice says in the trailer of the Bride’s gnarly tumble. “They did it on purpose.”
Nevertheless, Frankenstein’s monster and bride strike up a diabolical romance — one that’s heavy on blood and violence.
“‘Till death do us part,” Bale’s monster declares in the maniacal footage. Buckley’s bride happens to agree: “There is nothing left to do now but live.”
Gyllenhaal, an Oscar-nominated actress whose work includes “Crazy Heart” and “The Dark Knight,” has become an acclaimed filmmaker. She directed and wrote 2021’s “The Lost Daughter,” earning an Academy Award nomination for its screenplay. “The Bride!” also features Penélope Cruz, Annette Bening, and Peter Sarsgaard, who is also Gyllenhaal’s husband.
After “The Lost Daughter,” Gyllenhaal described wanting her next movie to be “pop, big and radical” — even if she didn’t exactly know that would entail. Then, she saw a random man at a party who was sporting a “Bride of Frankenstein” tattoo.
“It hooked me, and I went home and watched the movie,” Gyllenhaal told the room of theater owners. “In the original ‘Bride of Frankenstein,’ the bride is in the movie for about three minutes, and she doesn’t speak, which could not be more different than our bride.”
Buckley, donning dark sunglasses, interjected of her take on the character: “She’s a bit naughty!”
In the 1935 film, Frankenstein just wanted a bride — any old bride would do. All of this got Gyllenhaal thinking… “What happens if his bride that comes back is beyond his wildest imagination and doesn’t fit into the box that he imagined for her or the box that the world’s imagined for her?”
Buckley likened their relationship to the kind of diabolical partners-in-crime in cinematic classics such as “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Wild at Heart.”
“The Bride!” isn’t the only movie about to hit theaters that’s inspired by Mary Shelley’s creature. In November, Netflix will release Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” which stars Mia Goth and Oscar Isaac. Frankenstein is a venerable property, but more recent 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. It will be interesting to see how audiences respond to two films on similar subjects debuting within months of each other.
Warner Bros. will open “The Bride!” in theaters on March 6, 2026. It was originally slated to debut on September 26, 2025, but the studio pushed it back this week, giving it a little more distance from del Toro’s take.
During Warner Bros. presentation at CinemaCon, studio co-chairs Mike de Luca and Pam Abdy hyped up such movies as Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” director Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller “Sinners” and “Final Destination: Bloodlines.”
“In the coming months,” Abdy said, “Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group will release movies spanning every genre, helmed by an enviable lineup of filmmakers and starring many of the most celebrated actors of their generation.”
