Please Let Guillermo del Toro Make Phantom of the Opera

Guillermo del Toro’s forthcoming Netflix film, Frankenstein, has been a passion project for the director for many years. He’s been talking about making a Frankenstein movie since at least 2007, and basically thanked Mary Shelley for existing during his 2018 BAFTA acceptance speech for Best Director. This fact probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s seen the way his films consistently explore questions of monstrousness, agency, and what it means to be human. But now that he’s achieved his lifelong dream — and that film is already piling up Oscar buzz — what could possibly be next for him?

Maybe adapting another famous tale of a tortured and monstrous villain: The Phantom of the Opera, a character that has historically often been compared to Frankenstein’s monster. Though most people are likely familiar with the story of the infamous Opera Ghost thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster musical adaptation, the character initially hails from a Gothic horror novel by French author Gaston Leroux.

“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.”

No shade to whatever del Toro’s (undoubtedly brilliant) ideas about crime and stop-motion happen to be, but Phantom is a project he absolutely needs to take on. It’s perfect for him. A horror-tinged mystery about a wealthy weirdo with a skull-like face who lives beneath the Paris Opera House, who voice tutors and then becomes obsessed with a young singer, basically every aspect of this story screams for a del Toro treatment. Bonus: Leroux’s book is much more disturbing (and properly Gothic) than the musical it spawned. 

Inspired by historical events that took place at the Paris Opera during the 19th century — one of the chandelier’s counterweights really did crash through the ceiling and kill someone in 1896, and the Palais Garnier still has an underground lake, though it’s now closed to the public — and local legends surrounding a supposed ghost, Leroux’s novel is a blend of fact and fiction, and the book is full of imagery that sounds like it belongs in a del Toro movie.

The Phantom is a deformed, mentally troubled former stage magician who loves drama and lurks in the shadowy corners of the Opera House, regularly appearing as if out of nowhere and kidnapping people. The story involves plenty of masks, disguises, and false identities — the Opera Ghost is not a ghost, but a man named Erik, after all — and delightfully grisly images, like a wall in the graveyard lined with human bones. But at its heart, it is a story of a monster born from pain and isolation, and the doomed Gothic romance between the Phantom and his beautiful protégé, Christine Daaé, explores compassion and humanity in a way that… honestly should feel very familiar to anyone who has read or seen Frankenstein. 

Now, it’s unlikely we’re going to see a del Toro take on the Phantom singing “Music of the Night” (and more’s the pity there) or anything like that, but it’s almost sinfully easy to picture his take on iconic scenes from the novel, such as the infamous ball in which Erik appears dressed as the Red Death or the secrets of the dark, labyrinthine corridors sparwling beneath the Opera House. It’s hard to imagine someone better suited to bring an adaptation of this story to the screen. We deserve this is what I’m saying, so someone somewhere let this man cook.