While we’ve seen Dracula on the big screen in recent films including Renfield, The Last Voyage of the Demeter and this year’s Abigail, director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman) is going in a bit of a different direction with his next movie. He’s getting set to unleash Nosferatu, a new take on the classic film that predates the Bela Lugosi Dracula.
Bill Skarsgård will be playing the title character (also known as Count Orlok) for Robert Eggers, and he teases his top secret performance in a new chat with Esquire this week.
We say “top secret,” of course, because the movie’s marketing hasn’t yet revealed the look of the character. But it sounds like Skarsgård dove scary deep into the role. For starters, Esquire explains that the actor “worked with an opera singer to bring his voice down to its lowest possible pitch,” and “spent three to six hours every day in makeup and prosthetics.”
“It took its toll,” he tells Esquire in his own words. “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,” Skarsgård continues.
He additionally teases, “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.”
Focus Features will release Nosferatu in theaters for Christmas on December 25, 2024.
“Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is 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.”
Eggers (The Witch, The Northman) directs and he wrote the script. Eggers also serves as a producer alongside Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus, Jeff Robinov, and John Graham.
F.W. Murnau directed the original 1922 version of Nosferatu, while fellow German filmmaker Werner Herzog notably directed his own version of the classic tale back in 1979.
The 1922 silent movie followed the vampire Count Orlok, who wants to buy a house in Germany and becomes enamored with the real-estate agent’s wife. It was an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” which almost led to all copies being destroyed.
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