Guillermo del Toro and the cast of his upcoming Frankenstein film will receive the 2026 Visionary Award at the Palm Springs International Film Awards on January 3. The award honors their boundary-breaking collaboration, marking the first time it is presented jointly to a director and cast. Del Toro will also receive the Creative Impact in Directing Award the following day.
The Palm Springs International Film Festival has announced that director Guillermo del Toro, along with actors Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, and Mia Goth, will be honored with the 2026 Visionary Award on January 3. This accolade recognizes innovative cinema and highlights the exceptional teamwork in del Toro's adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Del Toro has long dreamed of bringing Frankenstein to the screen, having first encountered the novel at age 11. In a recent conversation with director Jason Reitman, he shared, “All my life, I’ve been aiming towards this movie. All 50 years of craft, thought, thematic pondering — everything. It is a fusion of the book, my life and what I know about the Romantic movement.” Traces of the story appear in his earlier works, including Cronos and Pinocchio, while his 2016 film Crimson Peak served as a “dress rehearsal” for this project.
In del Toro's version, the Creature, portrayed by Elordi, is depicted as gentle, innocent, and pure, diverging from traditional horror interpretations. Oscar Isaac plays Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a scientist obsessed with defeating death, who assembles the being from parts of dead soldiers in a vast laboratory. The film explores motifs like religion—posing the question, Can man play God?—and employs circular designs to mirror its narrative structure. Dominant colors of red, white, and blue underscore the themes.
Del Toro explained to Variety, “We follow Victor’s experiments in the lab, which have the language of red and reflect the brutality of Victor as an artist whose musical notes happen to be anatomical. Victor and Elizabeth [Goth] are the only ones who will wear red because Elizabeth is the mother figure, in a sense, and Victor is on a quest for eternal life because his mother died.” The Creature's creation features seamless stitching and varied coloration, making it resemble a newborn rather than a victim. “By the time the Creature is revealed, [the audience] will have already seen the things that make him unique,” del Toro noted. “He looks like a newborn, not like an ICU victim. And that’s important.”
Far from a horror tale, the film delves into humanity's essence, ending with forgiveness. “The question of the book is: What makes us human, and why are we here?” del Toro said. He emphasized diminishing values like forgiveness and acceptance, adding, “The movie hopes to provoke emotion from a text that is 200 years old because it’s telling us we should know better.” The Creature's line, “I forgive you,” resonates deeply: “It’s the one we don’t hear often enough,” del Toro reflected.
On January 4, del Toro will accept the Creative Impact in Directing Award at a special brunch.
