Guillermo del Toro would love to adapt The Phantom of the Opera after Frankenstein, but he'd "do it differently"

With a filmography that includes The Shape of Water and Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro is no stranger to Gothic stories or sympathetic outcasts. They're themes he's tackling again in his latest movie Frankenstein – and ones he'd like to explore in an adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera.

"The Phantom of the Opera, because it's such a classic tale, but I would do it differently," del Toro told Inverse when asked which misunderstood villain he'd like to take on next. "I have a couple of ideas but for now, I’m going into crime and stop-motion."

The Phantom of the Opera is a Gothic novel written by Gaston Leroux and first published in 1910. It follows a mysterious masked man who lives in a Paris opera house and becomes obsessed with a young singer, Christine. The book was adapted into a silent film by Universal in 1925 and, most famously, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1986 (and the much-maligned 2010 sequel, Love Never Dies).

Del Toro has previously revealed that he's working on a new violent thriller starring Frankenstein's Oscar Isaac, which is likely the "crime" in question. "I'm writing it right now, and it's called Fury, and essentially it's going back to [the] sort of thriller aspects of Nightmare Alley – very cruel, very violent," he said. "Like My Dinner with Andre but [with] killing people after each course."

As for the stop-motion, it was announced back in 2023 that the director would make an animated adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant in his second stop-motion collaboration with Netflix after 2022's Pinocchio.

Frankenstein is out now in theaters and arrives on Netflix on November 7. For more, fill out your watchlist with our guide to the best movies on Netflix streaming now.