Robert Eggers Opens Up About the Struggles and Setbacks in Bringing Nosferatu to Life: “It’s distasteful to do a remake of such a famous thing”

Nosferatu (2024) is a gothic horror film directed by Robert Eggers. It’s a remake of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu, which was inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The movie stars Bill Skarsgård as the vampire Count Orlok, with Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp playing the married Hutter couple.

Other cast members include Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, and Willem Dafoe. The film became an unexpected hit during the holiday season. It premiered in Berlin, Germany, on December 2, 2024, and was released in the U.S. on December 25, 2024, and internationally on January 1, 2025.

At the box office, the movie was expected to make about $25 million in its opening weekend, but it did even better. It made $11.55 million on its first day and $7.6 million on its second, raising expectations to $42 million. The film earned $21.7 million in its opening weekend and $40.8 million over five days, finishing third at the box office.

The movie has been successful, but as Eggers explained, the journey to success was tough. Work on Nosferatu began in 2015 when Eggers wanted to make it his second film, describing it as a passion project. However, he decided to delay the production.

In a recent interview, Eggers talked about the challenges he faced in bringing Nosferatu to life. He said it took almost ten years to finally get the movie made.

You never know how these things are going to come together but I’d been trying to make this movie for about ten years, and it fell apart a couple of times. The last time it fell apart I felt it was not going to ever happen, and I was OK with that. I thought that maybe I should be making original things only.

Eggers originally thought remaking a famous film like Nosferatu was a bad idea. He pitched another script, but it was rejected. Finally, he suggested Nosferatu to Peter Kujawski at Focus Features, and it worked out because the timing was right.

It’s distasteful to do a remake of such a famous thing. It’s over. Then I had another script that I took to market, and nobody wanted to make it. I went to Peter Kujawski at Focus Features and said, ‘How about Nosferatu?’ and he said yes. It just happened to be at the right time. So here we go.

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