The director of the critically acclaimed The Witch, Robert Eggers, has agreed to remake the classic vampire movie Nosferatu.
The Witch (read our review here) was produced for only $3 million, but it’s grossed $25 million in the US alone. Robert Eggers both wrote and directed the movie, which was his feature film debut.
Indiewire has spoken to Eggers about his next project, which will be the remake of the vampire movie Nosferatu from 1922:
“It’s shocking to me. It feels ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting for a filmmaker in my place to do Nosferatu next. I was really planning on waiting a while, but that’s how fate shook out.”
Fan of Nosferatu since childhood
He’s a fan of the original movie, and while he didn’t like the 80’s horror movies such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, he was instantly fascinated by the classical horror movies:
“I saw a picture of Max Schreck as Count Orlok in a book in my elementary school and I lost my mind.”
Max Schreck in “Nosferatu”
So he had his mom drive him to a mall, where he could order a VHS copy of Nosferatu (1922).
“Then, when I was 17, I directed the senior play [of] ‘Nosferatu’. It was very expressionist, it was much more expressionist than the film is. It was Cabinet of Dr. Caligari style [German Expressionistic].”
A local theater owner saw the play at Eggers’ high school and quickly hired him to do a professional version at his own theater.
“That’s 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.”
Robert Eggers is going the write the script for the remake, and he’s planning of creating an 1830 scenery. As for the title character:
“I can’t also do Max Schreck again either, so that’s fun, so it’s going back to the origins of the folk vampire.”
You can listen to the entire podcast interview below.
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