Robert Eggers on Why Nosferatu Is a Great Twisted Christmas Movie

This Christmas, there are many options at your local cineplex. There are lions, hedgehogs, witches, demigods, and more. But the coolest choice, the sexiest choice, is the vampire. This week, filmmaker Robert Eggers unleashes Nosferatu, a long-awaited, highly anticipated film inspired by the iconic 1922 film by F. W. Murnau. Bill Skarsgård stars as the sinister Count Orlok, who creeps his way into the lives of newlyweds Thomas and Ellen (Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp).

It’s a dark, atmospheric, but entertaining film from a filmmaker who has, even with just three films under his belt, developed a very well-earned reputation. With The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman, Eggers has cemented himself as a meticulous, visual filmmaker with a flair for the historic and gothic. Nosferatu is maybe his most “Eggers” film yet, but it’s also coming out at Christmas, a very commercial time.

io9 spoke to Eggers via video chat a few weeks back and that struggle between art and product is where our conversation began.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Germain Lussier, io9: I love your films because not only are they entertaining, they’re so meticulous, beautiful, and often just weird. I’m wondering, at any point in the process do you wrestle between artistic impulses and commercial viability?

Robert Eggers: Well, this film from the get-go was intended to be my most “approachable movie.” Maybe you know this and maybe you don’t but the main creative producer on this is Chris Columbus of Home Alone and Harry Potter fame. And Chris has been a mentor to me since we met during post-production of The Witch. But he knows that we are very different filmmakers and that’s part of why we get along creatively, and I think it’s such a nice match. And Jarin Blaschke, my DP and I, we meticulously storyboard the movies. Well, we work with a storyboard artist, but we meticulously plan all the shots. And Chris was combing through the storyboards, looking at them all very carefully, and would occasionally say, “Where’s this story beat that’s in your script? You need this here.” And Chris, being a master of orthodox Hollywood storytelling, was often like an antidote to me and Jarin’s arty-farty inclinations to tell this story as well as I wanted to, because he was there to make this the best Robert Eggers movie it could be, not to Chris Columbus-ify it. But also, with this film, I had incredible support from Focus Features, who gave me tons of creative control.

io9: And I think we get a hint that this was supposed to be more commercial because a year ago when the film was announced, Focus was like “Robert Eggers, Nosferatu, coming out Christmas Day.” And that’s always kind of a big deal, a Christmas release. Were you part of that conversation, and does a prime release date like that change your thinking at all?

Eggers: Yeah, I mean, I was part of the conversation, but ultimately that was the date that they pitched to me, and I embraced it with a lot of excitement. Obviously the film takes place, by the midpoint, around Christmas time, and there’s a Christmas tree, and there’s conversations about Christmas, and there’s a scene where there’s a music box that plays “O Tannenbaum” and it originally was playing like a Mozart piece, and when we got the Christmas release date, I was like, “Let’s put ‘O Tannenbaum’ in there.”

io9: That’s awesome. Now, Willem Dafoe is in the film whom you’ve worked before. Clearly he’s incredible but he also has some history with this world being in Shadow of the Vampire. Did you guys discuss that before and how much did those conversations come into this movie at all?

Eggers: I love that film, and it’s a great movie, but they’re sort of unrelated. But obviously, we both recognize it’s cool for audience members who are in the know to know that he is sort of hunting himself in this movie.

io9: Is there anything in this film you’re able to accomplish that you’re particularly proud of, or that was particularly difficult, either technically in terms of story and tone?

Eggers: I mean, there’s a lot of things. One thing, for me personally, I don’t know how audiences will experience it, but I feel like the long unbroken takes, the “owners” in this film, are a little less heavy-handed and a little bit more invisible. That’s my impression, maybe I’m wrong. I’m very proud of the atmosphere of the cemetery. That was something I really, really, really wanted. One of the very few things that Focus was wringing their hands about was my insistence to never shoot in anything but gloomy weather because we’re standing around waiting for a cloud cover and that can be very tense. But the graveyard was an example of the necessity of that way of working. And the Transylvanian village scene was incredibly complicated to cast and to costume and to block. There are some actors, mostly non-actors, some professional dancers, and everyone speaking a different language from a different country. It was very complicated, but I like how that turned out.

Nosferatu is in theaters December 25.