Nosferatu has been on Robert Eggers’ mind as long as he’s had a career. Actually, even before that — when he was a teen, the director of acclaimed films like The Witch and The Lighthouse had directed his high school’s staging of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 vampire classic. But the obsession started even earlier: when he was nine years old, he spotted a picture of Max Schreck in a book on vampires, which kickstarted a lifelong obsession that would turn Nosferatu into a decade-long passion project.
Back in 2014, Eggers was considering remaking Nosferatu, but balked at the idea of his sophomore effort being a new take on one of the greatest horror films of all time. "It feels ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting for a filmmaker in my place to do Nosferatu next,” Eggers told IndieWire back in 2016.
