Warner Bros. Releases New Trailer for “THE BRIDE” Ahead of March 6: Everything You Need to Know

1818’s “Frankenstein” – the groundbreaking Gothic science fiction novel by Mary Shelley – may have been a one-and-done, but its 1931 film adaptation had a sequel that’s nearly as famous: “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), which brought the monster’s wife to the screen for the first time. This woman (if she can still be called such) will be the protagonist of an upcoming film, called simply but forcefully “The Bride!” Warner Bros. released its first trailer for this movie on Jan. 15, 2026.

An Unrelentingly Bleak Period World

If “Seven” were a Frankenstein film, its trailer might look like that of Warner Bros’ “The Bride!” This is a preview that plunges us mercilessly into a brutal, horrible world. The setting is 1930s Chicago; the protagonist (Jessie Buckley) looks to be a nightclub performer of some kind, as we first see her wearing a red-orange dress and sitting in that classic pose reserved for attractive ladies in every noir film ever made: at a table, smoking a cigarette with a suggestive expression. This is not to say that there’s anything remotely sensual about this clip.

Buckley has played an abused woman at least once before (in Alex Garland’s 2022 surreal gender-parable weird-fest, “Men”), but never in such revoltingly horrific circumstances as “The Bride!” imposes on her character. We first hear her screaming for help, crying desperately: “I didn’t want any of this!” A man casts her down a staircase with enough force to crack her skull.

When she awakens, she’s lying on a laboratory table, surrounded by scientists, with some kind of black paint that looks like the Crow’s makeup smeared on her lips and cheek. In comes not Frankenstein, but the monster himself (Christian Bale), who describes how he and these scientists exhumed her corpse and reanimated her, as was done to him. “I am a monster,” he says. “Yeah,” she replies, “So am I.”

It’s love at first sight, apparently, and what follows is nothing short of a Mary Shelley-inspired spin on “Bonnie and Clyde.” We see several shots of the Bride and her new paramour driving gleefully along country roads. But darkness is never absent for long from any portion of this trailer, and it comes flooding back when they start musing about the loathsomeness of a world ruled by living men. They are hunted by ruthless law enforcement (including one patrolman who seems despicably touchy-feely with the Bride during a pullover) but still manage to do such things as stick up a nightclub and make its owner beg for his life.

The Bride – A Feminist Monster

She may be a literal walking corpse, but the Bride’s defiance is also grounded in an anti-patriarchal conviction that’s decades ahead of her time. When her lover calls her “the Bride of Frankenstein,” she hastens to assert that it’s the 1930s in chronology only: “No. Just the Bride.” We’ll have to see the actual movie to learn whether her mortal name will ever appear in dialogue. Perhaps director Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Lost Daughter“) will heighten the protagonist’s mystique by keeping it unspoken, or (a much cornier option) bleeped out like that of Beatrix Kiddo for much of “Kill Bill.”

Overall: Very Dark and Borderline Comic Book-y

All in all, the trailer for “The Bride!” presents this upcoming film as nothing if not distinctive. It’s a Frankenstein adaptation set in the era when the classic story most famously came to the screen, portraying its two monsters as anti-establishment outlaw lovers who are alternately warring against and fleeing from a world in which they see nothing but corruption. Between the aforementioned Crow-like makeup and the story’s decidedly larger-than-life tone, these two characters come across almost like characters in a dark comic book – avenging angels with a very distinctive look and the power to shake up the whole world.

Buckley and Bale both appear more than up to this acting challenge. It remains to be seen whether Gyllenhaal’s execution will make “The Bride!” classic, calamitous, or somewhere in between on the spectrum of Mary Shelley adaptations.

“The Bride” will open wide on March 6. Additional stars include Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Penélope Cruz.