Frankenstein’s monster finds his own companion in The Bride! writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second feature film.

Jessie Buckley stars as the title character and Christian Bale as her would-be lover, Frankie, and Gyllenhaal has updated the setting of the story to 1930s Chicago, in the world of organized crime and unending mayhem.

The storyline of The Bride! follows “a lonely Frankenstein (Bale) [who] travels to 1930s Chicago to ask groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him. The two revive a murdered young woman and The Bride (Buckley) is born. What ensues is beyond what either of them imagined: Murder! Possession! A wild and radical cultural movement! And outlaw lovers in a wild and combustible romance!” (The exclamation points all belong to the PR flak at Warner Bros.)

The trailer shows the couple looking a lot more punk rock than the Bonnie and Clyde milieu would suggest…think doomed lovers Sid and Nancy, with perhaps a touch of the Joker and Harley Quinn added in.

The Bride!‘s trailer opens with Buckley falling down a flight of stairs, then later asking, “was I just the same before the accident?” 

We then see the duo digging up a grave and Frankenstein telling the Bride, “There wasn’t any accident. Everything we did, we did it on purpose. There is nothing left to do now…but live.”

This is Gyllenhaal’s second feature film as a director; in 2021 she directed The Lost Daughter, which also starred Buckley and was nominated for a plethora of awards, including an Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

In addition to Buckley, Bale and Bening, The Bride! also stars Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Penélope Cruz. The film is based on The Bride of Frankenstein, the 1935 follow-up to Universal’s Frankenstein, both directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester as the reanimated couple.

Gyllenhaal’s film was originally going to be released on Netflix, which is coincidentally about to release director Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein, starring Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth and Oscar Isaac. That film will have a limited theatrical release to tee it up for awards season before being streamable on Netflix in November.

The two films are not related, and Gyllenhaal instead went with Warner Bros. to release The Bride! in theaters. You can attend the wedding (if there is one) when The Bride! hits theaters on March 6th, 2026.