Willem Dafoe is as excited as everyone else is to see Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu.
Speaking with IndieWire, Dafoe, who plays Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz in the upcoming Nosferatu remake, commented on the movie’s “extraordinary” visuals and Robert Eggers’ “articulate” directing style.
“[Eggers] gets better and better and better, gets more articulate, more on top of it,” Dafoe said. “He’s so clear when he works. It opens in December of next year, which is a long time away. Trying to be an optimist, I think the studio must feel very strong about it, because that’s quite a tough slot, so I’m excited about that. I saw some footage when we were shooting, and I can honestly say, visually, it was like unlike anything I have seen…The look of it and how it was shot was extraordinary.”
Dafoe and Eggers have collaborated in the past
Dafoe has worked with Eggers prior to Nosferatu. While he didn’t appear in Eggers’ 2015 directorial debut, The Witch, Dafoe starred alongside Robert Pattinson in 2019’s The Lighthouse. He additionally played Heimir the Fool in 2022’s The Northman, which was led by Alexander Skargård, Nicole Kidman, and Anya Taylor-Joy.
Plot details remain under wraps for Nosferatu at this time, though it is known that Bill Skarsgård will be playing the vampiric Count Orlok. Eggers recently told Total Film about Skarsgård’s performance, “He’s so transformed in every aspect that I don’t know if people will give him the credit. You can see Bill [as Pennywise] in the It make-up; you can’t detect any Bill here. He worked with an opera coach to lower his voice an octave. I think people are going to think we treated it digitally, but that’s his performance.”
Additionally, Nosferatu stars Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Simon McBurney, and Ralph Ineson.
Written and directed by Eggers, Nosferatu releases in theaters on December 25, 2024, from Focus Features.
