What to expect from Robert Eggers’ res­ur­rec­tion of Nosferatu

With Robert Eggers’ Viking revenge epic The North­man set to be released this April, the director’s name is once again on everyone’s lips. In recent months, how­ev­er, anoth­er rumoured Eggers’ project has come into view. A remake of Nos­fer­atu, which was ini­tial­ly set to begin pro­duc­tion in Prague a few weeks ago, will reunite Eggers with his The Witch and The North­man star Anya Tay­lor-Joy. With Har­ry Styles hav­ing report­ed­ly pulled out due to a sched­ul­ing con­flict, inter­est around the project con­tin­ues to build.

The lat­est spec­u­la­tion comes almost 100 years after FW Murnau’s orig­i­nal film pre­miered in Berlin in March 1922. Nos­fer­atu will cast its omi­nous shad­ow over the­atres across Europe this spring in cel­e­bra­tion of its cen­te­nary. The ver­sion of the film being screened was restored by direc­tor and his­to­ri­an Luciano Berriat­ua, who pieced togeth­er the last sur­viv­ing copies of the film and repaired the print frame by frame.

Nosferatu’s long-await­ed return to the big screen appears per­fect­ly timed for Eggers, whose desire to mount a remake of the hor­ror clas­sic can be traced back to his high school days – as a stu­dent he co-direct­ed a stage adap­ta­tion which saw his two broth­ers por­trayed motion­less gar­goyles. There’s no guar­an­tee on the tim­ing of his new reimag­in­ing, but Eggers told LWLies recent­ly “[…] I’ve spent so much time on Nos­fer­atu, it would be very infu­ri­at­ing if it nev­er happened”.

The plot of the orig­i­nal film is near­ly iden­ti­cal to Bram Stoker’s nov­el ​‘Drac­u­la’. The mys­te­ri­ous and eccen­tric Count Orlok becomes infat­u­at­ed with Helen, the wife of a man with whom Orlok is car­ry­ing out a prop­er­ty deal. The fate of Helen is not a par­tic­u­lar­ly cheery one, nor is that of a num­ber of local towns­peo­ple. The plot is so sim­i­lar to ​‘Drac­u­la’, in fact, that Stroker’s wid­ow, Flo­rence, attempt­ed to sue the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Prana-Film, before dis­cov­er­ing that they had no mon­ey left.

Fol­low­ing a three-year legal bat­tle, a judge ordered for every copy of the Ger­man expres­sion­ist clas­sic to be destroyed. By this point, how­ev­er, the film had already made it to Amer­i­ca where it quick­ly gained trac­tion. Mur­nau did not live to see his film achieve the inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion it enjoys today, dying in a car acci­dent in 1931.

Judg­ing by the ear­ly cast­ing rumours, Eggers appears to be stick­ing to what he knows. Tay­lor-Joy spoke to Enter­tain­ment Week­ly back in 2018 about the prospect of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the direc­tor for a third time: ​“Oth­er than being a won­der­ful human being, he’s such a bril­liant direc­tor. So, hope­ful­ly, we will get the chance to make [Nos­fer­atu] togeth­er.” Tay­lor-Joy received acclaim for her har­row­ing per­for­mance in Eggers’ 2015 folk hor­ror, The Witch, which was heav­i­ly inspired by the Salem Witch Trials.

Else­where, Willem Dafoe is report­ed to be in line for the title role, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Eggers on 2019’s The Light­house. It would mark a reprisal of sorts for Dafoe, who starred as Max Schreck (who plays Count Orlok in the 1922 Nos­fer­atu) in the 2000 biopic Shad­ow of the Vampire.

Eggers has worked with a vir­tu­al­ly unchanged team on every fea­ture he has made to date, so it would be fair­ly safe to assume that the likes of edi­tor Louise Ford, pro­duc­tion design­er Craig Lath­rop, and cos­tume design­er Lin­da Muir will be join­ing him once again. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Jarin Blaschke, who worked with Eggers on The Light­house, already appears to be on board, with the New York­er not­ing that he has ​“already enrolled his daugh­ter in school in Prague.” The exte­ri­ors of the orig­i­nal Tran­syl­va­nia-set Nos­fer­atu were filmed on loca­tion in Slo­va­kia, which like the Czech Repub­lic is renowned for its Goth­ic architecture.

With Murnau’s film pre­dat­ing the advent of colour cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Blaschke shoot­ing The Light­house on sim­i­lar­ly grainy black-and-white stock, we could well see a return of this retro style when Nos­fer­atu is resurrected.