Robert Eggers’ Long Road to Making ‘Nosferatu’: How a Childhood Obsession Became His Biggest Film Yet
In November 2016, Robert Eggers was only the thirteenth guest on IndieWire’s then-new podcast, Filmmaker Toolkit. He came on to do a deep dive into his first feature, “The Witch,” but during the conversation, he discussed his lifelong obsession with F.W. Murnau’s 1922 “Nosferatu.”
As a kid, Eggers couldn’t handle watching the hardcore horror films he now makes himself, but he was drawn to “anything dark” and feasted on early Universal and Hammer horror films. It was at this time he saw an image of actor Max Schreck as the infamous vampire in Murnau’s silent classic.
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“I saw a picture of Max Schreck a Count Orlok in a book in my elementary school and I lost my mind,” said Eggers back in 2016. “In rural New Hampshire, it was not the middle of nowhere by any means, but it was not easy to find, [and] my mom drove me out to this mall to get the order the VHS.”
It’s an obsession that would lead to Eggers stage a theater production of “Nosferatu” while he was still in high school, and after “The Witch” became a breakout success, he got the opportunity to do his own remake as — at least, what he thought at the time would be — his second feature. Said Eggers on Toolkit back in 2016, announcing “Nosferatu” would be his next film, “[It’s shocking] to me. It feels ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting for a filmmaker in my place to do ‘Nosferatu’ next. I was really planning on waiting a while, but that’s how fate shook out.”
As it turns out, Eggers would have to wait to make “Nosferatu,” which was a blessing in disguise. When Eggers came back on Toolkit this month to break down how he made “Nosferatu,” he discussed how he could never have delivered on his vision for the film if he hadn’t made his second and third features (“The Lighthouse” and “The Northman”) first.
“I wouldn’t have had the control because I didn’t have the clout, and I also didn’t have, frankly, the experience,” said Eggers when he came back on Toolkit to discuss “Nosferatu.” “I was a less adept filmmaker than I am now. I mean, maybe it have been even better if I waited longer [laughs], but certainly I’ve learned a lot and I’ve grown a lot as a person and as a filmmaker.”
Looking back, Eggers views “The Witch” (2016), “The Lighthouse” (2019), and “The Northman” (2022) as important learning learning steps toward realizing his dream project.
“‘The Witch,’ proud of it, but I was frustrated that I wasn’t able to get what was in my head onto the screen. ‘The Lighthouse’ was a perfect stepping stone where I felt like I was able to do that. And ’The Northman,’ because the scope and scale was so massive, it was harder for me to do the same,” said Eggers. “It was a beast, a big learning experience, I’ve said this before, after making ‘The Northman,’ I finally felt like I know how to direct a movie, like I’m not trying to convince people that I know how to direct a movie. I’m not someone who has a lot of ideas and just hoping that it’s going to work. That gave me the tools to finally feel confident as a director, so it was nice going into ‘Nosferatu’ with that feeling.”
The real gift of “The Northman,” according to Eggers, was Regency and Focus Features allowing the director to bring his creative heads of department from those first two, much smaller films. Normally, when a director makes a big step up from a low-budget film to a $90 million production like “The Northman,” the studio surrounds them with veteran talent behind the camera, but across the board, “The Northman” was an enormous step up for Eggers’ closest collaborators cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, editor Louise Ford, production designer Craig Lathrop, costume designer Linda Muir, composer Robine Carolan, and re-recording mixer/sound designer Damian Volpe. Collectively, the group had never made anything bigger than “The Lighthouse” and would continue working with Eggers on “Nosferatu.”
“It was a film that was too big for our britches,” said Eggers of “The Northman.” Going through that learning experience with his team is what Eggers marks as the biggest source of his growth as a filmmaker. “My collaborations with my creative heads of department has just grown so much stronger and we’re further extensions of each other. We can push each other, further beyond what any of us could imagine without the other one of us pushing. We’re a lot better at articulating what’s in our imaginations and getting it onto the screen.”
To hear more about how Eggers collaborated with his “Nosferatu” crafts team, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
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