For the past few years, Robert Eggers has been planning to direct a new take on Nosferatu starring Anya Taylor-Joy, but that particular project has now fallen apart twice. Most recently, Eggers’s Nosferatu fell apart shortly before pre-production was to begin, which has led to The Witch and The Northman filmmaker wondering if it’s even meant to be at this point.
Speaking with Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast this week, Robert Eggers suggested that perhaps the ghost of the original Nosferatu director is trying to tell him something.
“Nosferatu was something I saw pretty young that… changed my life,” Eggers notes. “I’m just starting to think that [F.W.] Murnau doesn’t want me to make it. It feels like that.”
Eggers continues, “It just feels like it’s so hard, and I don’t know why. And I think [Werner] Herzog had the right… because of German history and German cinema history, to make it. And maybe the ghosts of Murnau and Albin Grau are telling me… stop barking up that tree. I don’t know. That doesn’t mean that that’s true. I’m just wondering.”
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. As for Albin Grau, he was the German art director/architect who worked on the sets and costumes for Murnau’s original classic, and he’s also credited as a producer on Nosferatu 1922.
[Related] Creeping Shadows: Why ‘Nosferatu’ Still Holds Up 100 Years Later
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. Nevertheless, Nosferatu still endures after all these years, and Orlok will surely be back…
Will Robert Eggers be the one to resurrect him? Here’s hoping.
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