For those of you that missed reading Mary Shelley’s seminal science-fiction novel in high school, Netflix is offering a new incentive to get readers into the classic. The streamer has partnered with Penguin Random House to release a new paperback and e-book edition of Frankenstein, in honor of Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation that hits Netflix this winter.
The new edition features an introduction by del Toro himself, along with new cover art inspired by the film. Displaying a Creature clearly inspired by Jacob Elordi’s take on the character, the new cover reflects less of the green, Boris Karloff-created monster we’re more familiar with, and more of what Shelley wrote in the text itself: a creature created from the most beautiful parts of man in Victor Frankenstein’s attempt to achieve godlike perfection.
Clearly, that didn’t work, but the Creature on the cover is certainly more attractive than what we’re used to — at least compared to the “Netflix film” sticker gracing the two-hundred year old novel that invented modern science-fiction.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was originally published in 1818, after a competition in 1816 between her, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori inspired the gruesome tale of a man who drops out of medical school to play god. (This competition also produced Polidori’s pre-Dracula story The Vampyre.) After a revised edition in 1831 was published, the novel quickly became a part of the fabric of literary history, inspiring numerous stage plays, novels, comics, and of course, films.
Netflix’s new take on the story stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, alongside Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Ineson, and Felix Kammerer. Pan’s Labyrinth director del Toro helms the film from a script he wrote based on Shelley's novel, with producers Gary Ungar, Scott Stuber, and J. Miles Dale. This new adaptation joins a list of over four hundred films and three hundred TV episodes that have featured Frankenstein’s Monster in some way, a gang that also includes James Whale’s classic, as well as Young Frankenstein, The Monster Squad, Van Helsing, and more.
Penguin Random House’s new edition of Frankenstein hits shelves on October 28. Check out the new cover below:
