Robert Eggers has been said to be developing a remake of Nosferatu for many years, but even the director has his doubts it will ever happen.
Some movies grab the attention from the moment they are rumored to be in development, and one such film is the remake of German vampire movie Nosferatu which has been off and on the radar for several years. The Northman director Robert Eggers was said to be behind the new take on the 1922 movie, but while promoting his new movie, Eggers has admitted that he isn’t sure the film will ever happen.
Having been rumored to have Harry Styles attached to star, and at one point or another being linked to Willem Dafoe, mostly by fan posters and begging, Nosferatu seems destined to become one of those mythical never-to-be-seen ventures that everyone seems to be behind but never comes to fruition. This is something that Eggers has acknowledged, along with the belief that he feels the project may be under some kind of curse.
"Dude, I don't know," Eggers told IndieWire. "It's fallen apart twice. I've been trying to get the word out because the word did carry that Harry Styles was going to be in the movie. I just want to be clear that he was going to be Hutter and not Nosferatu himself. I've been trying so hard ... And I just wonder if [original director F.W.] Murnau's ghost is telling me, like, you should stop."
Nosferatu was originally released in 1922, and has become known as one of the first movies to have adapted the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, even though it was never authorized and comes with quite a complex history as far as copyright infringement goes. While there were changes made to the name of the Count and some other minor details, the heirs of Stoker had a court ruling agreed that the film should be destroyed. However, some prints of the movie survived the purge, and it is now seen as one of the greatest pieces of influential cinema ever released. It has entered into pop culture in many ways, from footage being used in the music video for Queen hit Under Pressure, to being referenced in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, so it is not surprising that a remake is often being considered.
Related: 100 Years Later, Nosferatu Remains One of the Most Influential Vampire Movies
Although there always seems to be news of the remake of Nosferatu, with a Los Angeles Times profile of Anya Taylor-Joy last year suggesting that the actress was linked to the movie and would be filming this year, it would seem that for now, the only remake of the film is going to be the 1979 Werner Herzog movie. That is something that Eggers is fine with, as despite feeling there is something “off” about that version, he also believes that it was perhaps just one of those things that was meant to be done.
"Herzog's movie -- for me, and I love Herzog, he's one of my favorite directors -- but I do feel like it is uneven," the filmmaker confessed. "Love the score, love [Isabelle] Adjani, love [Klaus] Kinski, but, like front-lit night scenes, what? That's just Herzog doing Herzog. But the best sequence of that movie, for me, is getting to the castle with Das Rheingold, and I don't even know if it makes sense in the film even though it's awesome. But at the same time because of German history and German cinema history, it was his right to do that film, and he needed to do that film. I don't know. Maybe Murnau's telling me I don't have the right."
Anthony Lund is an author, songwriter and puppeteer from a small village in the U.K. with an avid love of all genres of TV and film. As well as keeping up with the lastest entertainment news and writing about it for MovieWeb, he works as a video editor, voice over artist and production designer. A child of the 80s, he is the owner of almost 2000 books, more toys than his children, three Warner Bros. Store Gremlins and a production used Howard The Duck movie script.