Del Toro’s Longer Frankenstein Cut Comes to Criterion

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein hits Criterion Collection 4K on October 27 with a 158-minute Reborn Cut. Netflix, where the film has streamed since November 7, 2025, has not listed that longer version.

The four-disc set also keeps the 150-minute theatrical cut, a new making-of film, and craft talks with the departments that won three Oscars in March. Spine number 1332 is how the complete movie leaves the app.

The Reborn Cut Runs 158 Minutes

Criterion lists the theatrical Frankenstein at 150 minutes. The Reborn Cut runs 158 minutes, eight minutes longer, in a director-approved 4K master with a Dolby Atmos track and Dolby Vision on the UHD discs.

That gap is the buy. The stream still serves the cut that played limited theaters on October 17, 2025, then landed on Netflix three weeks later. The disc is where del Toro puts the extra tissue back in.

He flagged the longer version at Sundance on January 28, 2026, while presenting a 4K restoration of Cronos. Attendees said he framed it as the stitches cut for loyal fans. Criterion later gave that cut a title, The Reborn Cut, and put it beside the theatrical version instead of replacing it.

Aspect ratio stays 1.85:1. Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein. Jacob Elordi plays the Creature. Mia Goth is billed as both Elizabeth and Claire Frankenstein.

What the Four-Disc Set Puts on the Shelf

Criterion posted the street date and the extras on July 15, 2026. Preorder pages use three stock keeping units, each carrying both cuts.

THE CUTS, DISCS, AND LIST PRICES

The 4K combo is the one that splits the movies onto UHD and parks the extras on Blu-ray. Film critic Carlos Aguilar called Denver Balbaboco’s cover “so evocative and inspired by classic religious art.” Balbaboco, a Filipino poster designer, painted the Creature in the register of a church canvas, which is why the box is circulating as hard as the runtime.

Guillermo del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN • Coming to Criterion in October! https://t.co/WaWMzNiHfo@RealGDT's spellbinding take on one of the most enduring of all modern myths, imbues the classic tale with new depths of humanity while pushing it toward dazzling heights of gothic… pic.twitter.com/ejjEO7xqjw

— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) July 15, 2026

The director-approved 4K extras list is built around the people who made the gothic world, not a random deleted-scene dump.

WHAT ELSE IS ON THE DISCS

• Del Toro’s commentary: A new track on The Reborn Cut, not the theatrical cut.
• The Anatomy Lesson: A new making-of documentary billed as a director’s cut of the production story.
• The Parlour: Craft conversations with del Toro, Elordi, Goth, Isaac, cinematographer Dan Laustsen, production designer Tamara Deverell, costume designer Kate Hawley, and creature designer Mike Hill.
• The guests: Q&As moderated by Martin Scorsese and Patti Smith, plus Alexandre Desplat interviewed by film-music scholar Jon Burlingame.
• The booklet: An essay by scholar Christopher Frayling, with English SDH and descriptive audio on the discs.

Halloween movie lists that only count discs already on the shelf are skipping this title until late October. The wait is the point of a street date that sits on top of the holiday week.

Kate Hawley, Mike Hill, and Tamara Deverell Won

The Parlour is not filler. It puts on camera the three departments that won at the 98th Academy Awards winners and nominees ceremony on March 15, 2026.

Frankenstein took nine nominations and three statues, all in crafts. Best Picture went to One Battle After Another. Elordi lost Supporting Actor to Sean Penn. Del Toro lost Adapted Screenplay. Laustsen lost Cinematography. Desplat lost Original Score. The sound team lost as well.

THE NINE OSCAR LINES

Hill’s Creature makeup used 42 overlapping prosthetic pieces on Elordi. Application ran about 10 hours, with midnight call times on some days. Hill wanted a body that looked made, not patched after a wreck, with geometric seams and alabaster skin mixed from pink and blue.

Del Toro has been blunt about why those crafts sit at the center of the movie. “It is extremely important for me to keep the reality of film craft alive. I want real sets. I don’t want digital. I don’t want AI. I don’t want simulation. I want old-fashioned craftsmanship,” he said while the film was still rolling out. The Criterion extras are that argument on disc.

Del Toro Promised a Convent Scene in November

The disc path started as a reply, not a catalog page. On November 26, 2025, a fan asked about a deleted convent scene and the costume work inside it. Del Toro reposted and wrote that it would be included in the physical media release, the physical release he confirmed in November when most Netflix originals still died on the app.

Criterion’s published extras do not break out a convent reel by name. The labeled new film is The Reborn Cut. Whether that eight-minute add is the convent, a stack of trims, or both is a question the disc has to answer on October 27.

By November 26, 2025, the movie had already spent three weeks in Netflix’s global Top 10 for English-language films and logged 37 million hours viewed. Reviews were in. The missing scene was the unfinished business.

FROM THE REPLY TO THE STREET DATE

1. November 26, 2025: Del Toro confirms a physical release and says the convent scene will be on it.
2. January 28, 2026: At Sundance he describes an extended stitches cut for fans.
3. March 15, 2026: The film wins Costume, Makeup, and Production Design, and loses the six other Oscar races.
4. July 15, 2026: Criterion names October 27, The Reborn Cut, and the four-disc 4K layout.
5. October 27, 2026: DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD street in the United States.

February 2026 was the quiet middle of that line, when Frankenstein and KPop Demon Hunters were both added to the Criterion slate before dates or extras were public. KPop Demon Hunters follows on November 3 as spine 1333.

A Seven-Minute Sequence Already Left the Film

The theatrical cut is already a trimmed object. At the Palm Springs International Film Festival in early January 2026, del Toro said he shows cuts to a small circle of directors and takes the notes.

Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro Iñárritu, Jim Cameron, Rian Johnson, Steven. A lot of people see the movie, they tell me what they think, and we have the agreement to be brutal. Jim 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.

Guillermo del Toro, director, at the Palm Springs International Film Festival

He has not said that The Reborn Cut restores Cameron’s seven minutes. Eight minutes in and seven minutes out are different piles of footage until someone on the commentary track maps them. The irony still sits in the open: a friend talked him into cutting a beautiful stretch, and the disc is where he gets to stitch.

Pinocchio Opened This Door at Criterion

Netflix still withholds a physical copy of most of its original films. The prestige titles that do leave the service tend to leave through Criterion. Del Toro already walked that route with Pinocchio’s earlier Criterion Collection edition after the 2022 stop-motion film. Roma, The Irishman, Marriage Story, Okja, and The Power of the Dog took the same door.

So the “rare Netflix disc” line is only half right. It is rare for a random Netflix original. It is the house path for a del Toro movie the Academy already dressed in crafts. Criterion is the archive Netflix does not run.

Christoph Waltz plays Harlander. Charles Dance plays Leopold Frankenstein. Felix Kammerer is William. The booklet and The Parlour are how those names, and the people who built their rooms and coats, stay attached to the file after the ranking charts move on.

The Street Date Lands in Halloween Week

October 27, 2026, is a Tuesday, a week before Halloween, which is why collector shops have been treating the 4K combo as a seasonal object since July. List price on that combo is $59.95. The Blu-ray is $49.95. The DVD is $29.95.

Nothing in Criterion’s listing, or in del Toro’s public remarks since July, puts The Reborn Cut on Netflix. Until that changes, the longer Frankenstein is a box with a Balbaboco cover, two 4K discs, and a commentary the stream does not host.

The discs ship October 27.