Just a few months after the release of his gripping, gothic feature film debut “The Witch” in 2016, director Robert Eggers balked at the immensity of his next opportunity: a remake of F.W. Murnau’s legendary vampire flick “Nosterfatu.” Sitting for the “Filmmaker Toolkit” podcast, Eggers joked to host Chris O’Falt, “It feels ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting for a filmmaker in my place to do ‘Nosferatu’ next.” He elaborated by saying that he had planned to wait before taking on his lifelong passion project. But as fate would have it, “Nosferatu” moved up on his docket.
But fate is a fickle, unreliable bedfellow, especially for directors. They plan, and the studios, production teams and scheduling conflicts laugh. Shortly after its announcement, “Nosferatu” was delayed, and more impediments would arrive well into the next decade. Fans of Eggers’ work struggled to keep the faith. Murnau’s film was a distinctly German approach to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” and its expressionist style seemed like the ideal putty for Eggers to mold after crafting a haunting debut feature that shot to the top of so many 2016 best-of lists. Unfortunately, one of the painful realities of being an artist is that the paradigm of an individual’s creative interests can often remain out of reach.
