Guillermo del Toro says James Cameron convinced him to cut 7 minutes of Frankenstein: "Jim came in and he said, 'This is beautiful, but you gotta take it out"

Guillermo del Toro has revealed that James Cameron told him to cut a "beautiful" seven-minute scene from Frankenstein.

"What I do – because we don't test the movies – I show it to the 14, 16 most brilliant friends I know, and I'm blessed with good friendships," del Toro told Variety on the red carpet at Palm Springs International Film Festival.

"Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro Iñárritu, Jim Cameron, Rian Johnson, Steven [Spielberg]," he continued when asked who was in that circle. "A lot of people see the movie, they tell me what they think, and we have the agreement to be brutal. Jim [Cameron] came in and he said, 'Look, there's this section' – which is not in the movie anymore – 'This is beautiful, but you gotta take it out. And it was about seven minutes… When someone gives me a note that is in that circle, I do it. I don't argue."

Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac as the titular scientist, whose outlandish experiments result in the creation of new human life in the form of the Creature, played by Jacob Elordi. The movie is a long-time passion project of del Toro's and the filmmaker has been trying to make it for almost two decades. "It definitely highlights the personal over the scientific," Elordi told GamesRadar+ last year. "To me, it's a biography of Guillermo's."

As for Cameron, his latest sci-fi epic Avatar: Fire and Ash hit theaters last month. The movie sees the Sully clan go up against a new threat: the Mangkwan, led by the dangerous Varang, who's allied herself with Jake's enemy Colonel Miles Quaritch.

Frankenstein is available to stream on Netflix. For more on what to watch, check out our guide to the other best movies on Netflix in 2026.