Nosferatu: Everything We Know About the Robert Eggers Remake

The latest film from The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman writer/director Robert Eggers‘ is a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic Nosferatu (watch it HERE), and Focus Features will be giving the film “a prime holiday season release” when they bring it to theatres on Wednesday, December 25th. Anticipation levels are high for this one, so we have decided to put together a list of Everything We Know about this version of Nosferatu:

PLOT

Nosferatu tells a familiar story. An unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the original Nosferatu has the following synopsis: In this highly influential silent horror film, the mysterious Count Orlok (Max Schreck) summons Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen (Greta Schroeder). After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok’s servant, Knock (Alexander Granach), prepares for his master to arrive at his new home.

Stoker’s heirs sued Murnau over the film and a court ordered that all copies of Nosferatu were to be destroyed, but thankfully some survived, so we still have Murnau’s movie to watch and enjoy. Werner Herzog directed a remake in 1979, and the movies Shadow of the Vampire and Mimesis Nosferatu both dealt with the making of Nosferatu movies. David Lee Fisher recently released a “remix” called Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which stars Doug Jones.

Eggers’ take on the concept is described as being a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman in 19th century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.

LONG IN THE WORKS

Eggers’ remake was first announced soon after The Witch premiered at Sundance in 2015. This is a passion project that he has been wanting to make for decades, as his first viewing of the film was a pivotal moment in his life. He even co-directed a stage production of the movie when he was in high school. He told IndieWire that watching Nosferatu was “when I realized this is what I want to be doing. Nosferatu has a very close, magical connection for me. Though if I were to make the movie 17-year-old Rob was going to make of Nosferatu it would have been something between like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Sin City, whereas this is going to be the same approach as The Witch, where 1830s Biedermeier Baltic Germany needs to be articulated in a way that seems real.” Eggers felt that it was “ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting” for him to be doing a Nosferatu remake as his second feature film, but that’s how it looked like things were going to play out. This wasn’t as easy to get into production as expected, though, so it turned out that Nosferatu will be his fourth film.

Eggers envisioned his The Witch star Anya Taylor-Joy as the female lead, and her involvement with the project was confirmed in August of 2017. But Taylor-Joy’s career took off in a major way after The Witch, so they found it difficult to find room in her schedule to make Nosferatu. At one point, the project was moving forward with Taylor-Joy as Ellen Hutter and Bill Skarsgard of the It films as her husband Thomas Hutter. But it fell apart. Then it was on track again in 2021, with filming expected to take place in Prague that fall. Taylor-Joy was still on board to play Ellen, with singer Harry Styles as Thomas. But, at the last minute, Styles dropped out due to scheduling concerns and everything fell apart again.

It began to look like Nosferatu was cursed. Speaking with IndieWire again, Eggers said, “It’s fallen apart twice. … I’ve been trying so hard. And I just wonder if Murnau’s ghost is telling me, like, you should stop.” Thankfully, it didn’t take him long to put the pieces back together again.

CAST

Once Eggers managed to get Nosferatu on track for the third time, Taylor-Joy was too busy to fit the movie back into her schedule. So the role of Ellen Hutter went to Lily-Rose Depp of The Idol. Nicholas Hoult (Renfield) was cast as her husband Thomas, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) as Thomas’s friend, German ship merchant Friedrich Harding, and Emma Corrin (The Crown) as Friedrich’s wife Anna. The role of a crazy vampire hunter named Von Franz went to Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man: No Way Home). Ralph Ineson (The Witch) was cast as Von Franz’s cohort Dr. Wilhelm Sievers, and Simon McBurney (The Conjuring 2) landed an unspecified role.

Bill Skarsgard had been wanting to work with Eggers for years. As previously mentioned, he was cast as Thomas Hutter in a version of Nosferatu that fell apart. They were going to work together on The Northman, which starred Skarsgard’s brother Alexander Skarsgard, but then the younger Skarsgard ran into scheduling issues. As he watched Nosferatu come back together again, he was desperate to get involved. But then Hoult was cast as Thomas Hutter, so he couldn’t step back into that role. He had also read for the role of Friedrich Harding in the past, but that role went to Taylor-Johnson. Things weren’t looking promising for Skarsgard… until Eggers offered him the chance to read for the vampire Count Orlok. Skarsgard is just in his early thirties, and Eggers had been looking for an actor in their forties to play the Count… but Skarsgard not only won the job, it has been said that he disappeared into the role once he reported to set.

Speaking with Empire, Eggers said, “I’ll say that Bill has so transformed, I’m fearful that he might not get the credit that he deserves because he’s just…he’s not there… In my opinion he looks like a dead Transylvanian nobleman, and in a way that we’ve never actually seen what an actual dead Transylvanian nobleman would look like and be dressed like.” He explained to Coming Soon, “There are things that are Schreck-like but I felt we had to do something else. Basically I was like, ‘What would a dead Transylvanian nobleman actually look like for real?’ Bill lost a tremendous amount of weight. He’s so transformed in every aspect that I don’t know if people will give him the credit. You can see Bill [as Pennywise] in the It make-up; you can’t detect any Bill here. He worked with an opera coach to lower his voice an octave. I think people are going to think we treated it digitally, but that’s his performance.“

During an interview with Esquire, Skarsgard revealed that he had to spend three to six hours every day getting the makeup and prosthetics put on so he could become Count Orlok. He mostly stayed away from his co-stars and worked with an opera singer to bring his voice down to its lowest possible pitch. He said, “It took its toll. It was like conjuring pure evil. It took a while for me to shake off the demon that had been conjured inside of me. … I do not think people are gonna recognize me in it.” When asked if the vampire is sexy, he replied, “He’s gross. But it is very sexualized. It’s playing with a sexual fetish about the power of the monster and what that appeal has to you. Hopefully you’ll get a little bit attracted by it and disgusted by your attraction at the same time.“

Eggers was also asked how into character Skarsgard got. He said, “I remember early on, him trying to talk to me about what it meant to be a dead sorcerer—and I’m into some pretty heavy occult shit, but he was on a different level. I was like, ‘This sounds accurate, but I don’t know how to converse about this with any fluidity.’“

Skarsgard admitted to Vanity Fair that he and Eggers both had moments where they questioned why they were making yet another version of Dracula, then reassured themselves that their take on the concept is worthwhile. “Orlok is also Dracula. To me, in terms of iconic horror characters, the number one is Dracula/Nosferatu. It’s the most seminal work of literature in gothic horror for sure. I think it’s been adapted more than probably any other book. This story is so ingrained in our subconscious that it was very daunting to step into it. I was a huge fan of [Robert] Eggers before. He and I would have these things we’re like, ‘What are we doing? Why are we doing Nosferatu? Are we taking on something too big here?’ We felt that kind of pressure of f*cking with a masterpiece. But the movie deserves its place as a new interpretation.“

This version of the Nosferatu character is said to look like a dead Transylvania nobleman, and we’re not going to see him until the movie is in theatres. Eggers told Vanity Fair, “This Orlok is more of a folk vampire than any other film version. That means he’s a dead person. And he’s not like, ‘I look great and I’m dead.’ Folk vampires in some ways are more visually similar to zombies. The reason why he looks the way he looks and he dresses the way he’s dressed is because for the first time in a Dracula or Nosferatu story, this guy looks like a dead Transylvanian nobleman . Every single thing he’s wearing down to the heels on his shoes is what he would’ve worn. That’s never been done.” Entertainment Weekly then learned, “Only when audiences arrive in theaters on premiere day this Christmas will the general public see the results of the full hair, make-up, and prosthetics.“

Skarsgard agrees with the decision to keep his character hidden in the marketing. “I think the best way to discover Orlok is through the movie for the first time. The movie functions on that, as well. He lives in the shadows for a long time, and it teases the reveal of the character as the movie progresses.“

EGGERS PUSHED HIMSELF

Eggers, who is also producing the remake with Jeff Robinson, John Graham, Chris Columbus, and Eleanor Columbus, was so intent on making his dream project something special, he tried to push himself beyond what he felt he was previously capable of. In the middle of production, he told Empire, “As always, it was a difficult shoot. Last night we were doing a scene on a ship with a lot of rain and waves, and the rain deflector, which tries to blow rain out of the lens, was breaking down and fogging. I spent the past several days working only with Russian sailors on a boat. I’m so happy to have made The Northman first and to have learned what I learned. When I think about the production plan of Nosferatu that we had the first time around, I’m sure I would have somehow pulled it out of my butt, but it’s hard not to imagine it being a failure.“

It sounds like this version of the film has turned out to be a success. It certainly impressed Dafoe, who had worked with Eggers on The Lighthouse. He told IndieWire, “(Eggers) gets better and better and better, gets more articulate, more on top of it. He’s so clear when he works. It opens in December of next year, which is a long time away. Trying to be an optimist, I think the studio must feel very strong about it, because that’s quite a tough slot, so I’m excited about that. I saw some footage when we were shooting, and I can honestly say, visually, it was like unlike anything I have seen. … The look of it and how it was shot was extraordinary.” He added that the look is very beautiful, and that his co-stars look like they stepped out of 19th century paintings in their wardrobe.

TRAILERS

We’ve seen some teaser trailers and full trailers for Nosferatu, and here they are:

POSTERS

Several posters have been made for the film, and you can check them out right here:

RATING, REACTIONS, RUNNING TIME

Nosferatu has earned an R rating with its bloody violent content, graphic nudity, and some sexual content. According to Fandango, the movie has a running time of 132 minutes – so it’s substantially longer than previous tellings of the story. Murnau’s film had a running time of 94 minutes and Herzog’s is 107 minutes long. Judging by the positive reactions that have come out of screenings of the movie, its 2 hours+ are definitely worth sitting through.

Movie-goers who see the film at Regal Cinemas will have the chance to get a collectible sarcophagus popcorn bucket, which is said to go for the price of $30.