1997 was a memorable year for Guillermo del Toro for two very different reasons. First, his father was kidnapped in Guadalajara, Mexico. Second, after a turbulent experience with Bob and Harvey Weinstein on his sophomore feature *Mimic*, the film was finally released.
When asked which ordeal was worse to deal with—the kidnapping or the Weinsteins—del Toro was emphatic. “The Weinsteins, hands down,” he told Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. during an appearance at Contenders Film: Los Angeles. “Because in the other thing, you knew what they wanted. The Weinsteins? Who the f*ck knew what they wanted?”
Del Toro shared that “there are images” and “moments” in *Mimic* that came directly from that difficult experience. Unfortunately, his debacle with the Weinstein brothers “lasted more than 72 days” and was far more unpredictable than the kidnapping incident. He also revealed that teaming up with *Avatar* helmer James Cameron to get his father back created a bond between them—making the two filmmakers “brothers.”
The director was at the DGA Theater to accept Deadline’s inaugural Contenders Hall of Fame Award and to discuss his latest film, *Frankenstein*. He described the new movie as the culmination of “more than 30 years of career and 50 years of obsession.”
During the sit-down, del Toro also shared his candid feelings about artificial intelligence (AI), a technology poised to disrupt the entertainment industry in innumerable ways. His sentiment can be summed up as “F*ck AI.”
“For all I know,” del Toro said, “AI may be useful for architecture, chemistry, medicine. But as far as art, I don’t think any artist raised their hand and said, ‘Can we have AI?’ I don’t think so.”
Comparing AI to an uninvited party guest, he explained that AI “knows what has been done; it doesn’t know what to do next. It’s not a human.”
What’s most interesting, according to del Toro, is to consider the moment—the “threshold”—when audiences might be willing to pay $12–$13 to watch a film or listen to a song made by artificial intelligence.
“If that happens,” he reflected, “then we’ll get the movies we deserve, I’m afraid to say.”
Turning back to his new film, *Frankenstein*, which stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the Creature, del Toro described the project as “an obsession that started at 7.”
Referencing the adage that “we’re born with one or two songs in ourselves,” he said that *Frankenstein* is one of those songs for him: “I am Johnny Cash singing ‘Hurt.’”
He added, “I aged into it. I failed into it; I succeeded into it. My knees hurt; my soul hurts. I have f*cked up enough that I feel the pain of the questions that [Mary Shelley] has. And I try to sing that song as if it’s new.”
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https://deadline.com/2025/11/guillermo-del-toro-weinstein-brothers-mimic-1236618627/