Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley follows the young writer Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, raised in eighteenth-century London by her father, the philosopher William Godwin. Restless and determined to make her mark, she falls for the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose charisma draws her into a secretive affair that defies the conventions of her time. The pair run away together, accompanied by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, and their travels eventually bring them to Lord Byron's household near Lake Geneva. There, amid personal turmoil and loss, Mary begins the work that will become Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

Haifaa al-Mansour directed and co-wrote the film with Emma Jensen, following her debut Wadjda and ahead of Nappily Ever After, The Perfect Candidate and Unidentified. Elle Fanning plays Mary, with Douglas Booth as Percy Shelley, Bel Powley as Claire Clairmont, Stephen Dillane as Godwin, Joanne Froggatt as Mary Jane Clairmont and Tom Sturridge as Lord Byron, among a credited cast of 23.

Released in 2017 and running two hours, the film was a co-production between Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Luxembourg and the United States, and took about 2 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.4/10 from roughly 20,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7/10 from a much smaller vote count. The critics' rating of 5.6/10 from 121 reviews is lower than both audience scores.