'The Witch' director Robert Eggers wants to remake classic silent horror film 'Nosferatu' because he wants to make vampires horrifying again.
Robert Eggers
The 36-year-old director plans to sink his teeth into the remake of F.W. Murnau's iconic 1922 flick, and says he picked the movie because he believes the mysterious Count Orlok is closer to a "traditional folk vampire" than the romanticised versions seen in other movies, including Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'.
He said: "I definitely hope to create, to tell some stories on larger canvases, which does mean making something that is narratively more broad.
"I mean, that movie ['Nosferatu'] is really important to me for many reasons, but I think 'Nosferatu' is closer to the folk vampire.
"The vampire [in 'Nosferatu'] is a combination of the folk vampire, of the literary vampire that actually has its roots in England before Germany, and also [has roots in] Albin Grau, the producer/production designer's occultist theories on vampires.
"So he's not a traditional folk vampire but it's much closer to that than Stoker, even though obviously Stoker is using a lot of folklore that he's researched to create his vampire. But Dracula is finally much more an extension of the literary vampire that was started by John Polidori, based on Byron."
And whilst it's too early to think about casting for his remake, Robert would be keen to get Willem Dafoe on board, after working with him on his new movie 'The Lighthouse'.
Willem previously starred as the vampire in 2000 movie 'Shadow of a Vampire', which was a fictional retelling of the making of 'Nosferatu', which suggested Max Schreck, the actor who played Count Orlok, was a real vampire himself.
He added: "You can ask Willem Dafoe. If you look, my next movie has been leaked [the Viking drama 'The Northman'] and we're trying to cast Dafoe in that, so I clearly enjoyed working with him."
'The Lighthouse' hit cinema screens earlier this month, and Robert also said he sees the flick as a companion piece to his 2015 film 'The Witch'.
Speaking to Bloody Disgusting, the filmmaker said: "I mean. It's not like I'm trying to make a 'Robert Eggers Cinematic Universe', where there'll a third New England horror-adjacent folk tale where the ghosts of Thomasin the Witch teams up with the One-Eyed Seagull to harass a nice couple who starts a B&B somewhere in New England in contemporary days.
"But yeah, both films are me trying to commune with folk culture of my past and are me and my brother's take on New England folk tales. So they're certainly companion pieces."