For Mike Hill and Guillermo del Toro, it all started with Frankenstein.
Years ago, Hill — a sculptor and special effects artist — was exhibiting his works at a convention in Burbank. Del Toro saw some of Hill’s monstrous creations on display and was so impressed that he decided to get in touch, tracking down Hill’s contact info from an obscure model kit forum. “I don’t know how he found me from some 20-year-old website,” says Hill, who describes del Toro’s investigation as “very Columbo-esque” work. “But he wrote to me, told me who he was, and asked to commission something.”
That first commission turned out to be a sculpture of Boris Karloff having his makeup applied for the iconic 1931 version of Frankenstein, and it would go on to be displayed in the director’s famous Bleak House. “Immediately it was Frankenstein,” Hill says, “our very first job together.”
From there, a fruitful relationship blossomed; Hill went on to design creatures for films like Nightmare Alley and The Shape of Water, and the Netflix anthology Cabinet of Curiosities. But when word came out that del Toro was working on his own long-awaited version of Frankenstein, Hill’s phone remained curiously silent. “I was fretting because I knew he was going to do Frankenstein and hadn’t been in touch with me,” Hill tells me. “It was driving me bonkers.” But del Toro hadn’t forgotten about his partner — in fact, it turns out Hill was vital for the project.
“Guillermo invited me for breakfast and he said: ‘Listen, we’re doing Frankenstein. If you’re not doing it, then I’m not doing it, so it depends on you right now. Eat your eggs and tell me at the end of it if we’re doing the movie.’”
Naturally, Hill said yes.
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