Robert Eggers has made quite the name for himself with his meticulous set of period films like The Witch, The Lighthouse, and his most recent, The Northman, and is looking to keep the streak going with his upcoming remake (the second one) of Nosferatu, the classic 1922 silent vampire movie. The vampire from it, Count Orlok, has gone on to inspire numerous other filmic bloodsuckers.
Deadline dropped the news that Willem Dafoe would be reteaming with Eggers after his turns in both The Lighthouse and The Northman for the vampire film remake.
Robert Eggers has really honed in on being the go-to guy in Hollywood for nailing a period piece down, whether it’s his middle English take on the Puritans and witchery with The Witch, or his late-nineteenth-century New England dialogue for The Lighthouse, or going full voicing with his Hamlet-inspired The Northman. Continuing his trend of creepy period supernatural stories, he’s now got a remake of Nosferatu underway from focus Features, and Willem Dafoe is joining a cast that already has Bill Skarsgard, Lily-Rose Depp, and Nicholas Hoult signed on.
Writing and directing as he’s done on his three previous projects, Eggers is going to be undertaking the second remake of the film first made in 1922 as an illegal adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, then still under copyright and staged as a successful theatrical production. Changing the names slightly, director F.W. Murnau created what has become one of the most iconic images of the vampire put to screen, a design that can be seen in everything from the 1970s Tobe Hooper version of ‘Salem’s Lot to Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II monster work. Nosferatu was already previously remade with Klaus Kinski as the vampire in Werner Herzog’s 1979 movie of the same name.
Willem Dafoe joining the cast is especially funny considering that the actor already starred in a 2001 movie, Shadow of the Vampire, in which the filming of Nosferatu is fictionalized with the caveat that the actor playing the vampire, Count Orlok (Willem Dafoe), actually is a for-real vampire. Dafoe was so good in the part he was even nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. Dafoe will be the only cast member not only with a previous connection to Eggers, but to Nosferatu itself, with his movie being possibly the second and a half remake. With Bill Skarsgard slated to be the titular Nosferatu, it’s going to be interesting to see what part Willem Dafoe takes in the remake.
Nosferatu is in pre-production.
Source: Deadline