🎧 'Nosferatu' Director on 'Wrestling With Hubris' to Remake a Vampire Classic

Robert Eggers on the box office and critical hit he once said it would be 'disgusting' for him to make

UNDEAD RECKONING Eggers was daunted by pursuing a tale as iconic as Nosferatu. “You need to come to terms with it and not let it bury you alive.” (Kevin Winter/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images)

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Robert Eggers knew for a long time that he wanted to remake the 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu — but he also felt it was an “ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting” thing for a young filmmaker to do, as he put it back in 2016, shortly after his debut feature The Witch made him one of the foremost creators of artistically-minded horror.

As he continued to build his reputation, through 2019’s raucous and dark The Lighthouse and 2022’s Norse epic The Northman, Nosferatu — a gothic tale of obsession centered on a young woman entangled with a vampire — stuck with him. It’s not so much that he decided it wasn’t a crazy idea to remake Nosferatu, he tells me on this week’s Prestige Junkie podcast — it’s just that he made his peace with it.

“You’re wrestling with your hubris and lack of confidence to take on something that’s so iconic and so important to so many people,” Eggers, 41, told me last week during a call from London, where he’s currently living. “It doesn’t go away. But obviously if you’re going to continue to pursue it, you need to come to terms with it and not let it bury you alive.”

BLOODY GOOD Nicholas Hoult in Nosferatu (Focus Features).

Nosferatu has become a holiday counterprogramming hit since it opened on Christmas Day, grossing $135 million worldwide on a budget that was reportedly under $50 million and looks a whole lot more lavish. Eggers, who grew up mostly in New England and attended drama school in New York, got his start as a production and costume designer before moving into the director’s chair. He’s exacting about every design element of his films — and that includes the marketing, which leaned heavily on the visuals of Nosferatu to promise a gothic horror film that was both impeccably crafted and undeniably cool.

“I’m intensely involved,” says Eggers, admitting there may be some people in the Focus Features marketing department who’d like him to back off. “Every once in a while I'll see something and be like, ‘I didn’t approve that graphic. Why is that there?’” He’s particularly proud of the faux-vintage Focus Features logo that opens the film, which you can now buy on a hat (I have one!) and the actual-vintage Universal Pictures logo that was meticulously restored by his go-to titles designer Teddy Blanks.

FANG CLUB Eggers, left, on the set of Nosferatu with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and actors Lily-Rose Depp and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. (Focus Features)

In our podcast conversation we talk about how Eggers works all these details into his films and then draws on them in his work with actors, as well as all the careers he considered before he found his place in film. Hear it in this week’s episode, which also includes a check-in with fellow awards watcher Tyler Coates, as we assess the impact of the Los Angeles wildfires on awards season — and how we might see it affect the Oscar nominations when they’re finally announced next week.