Bram Stoker’s Dracula has given us some of the most visually stunning films in the horror genre. From the silent era’s unauthorized Nosferatu to at least the ‘90s with Francis Ford Coppola’s take, we’ve been spoiled with adaptations. Now, Robert Eggers and Bill Skarsgard are going to bring it to the screen once more, this time with Nosferatu. And both were well aware of the pressures in adapting such a famous, powerful story yet again.
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Bill Skarsgard – who, as perhaps the reigning scream king, seemed destined to star in Nosferatu – said, “Orlok is also Dracula. To me, in terms of iconic horror characters, the number one is Dracula/Nosferatu. It’s the most seminal work of literature in gothic horror for sure. I think it’s been adapted more than probably any other book. This story is so ingrained in our subconscious that it was very daunting to step into it. I was a huge fan of [Robert] Eggers before. He and I would have these things we’re like, ‘What are we doing? Why are we doing Nosferatu? Are we taking on something too big here?’ We felt that kind of pressure of f*cking with a masterpiece. But the movie deserves its place as a new interpretation.”
That new interpretation of Count Orlok has been kept hidden in the shadows (as it should be), with director Robert Eggers only comparing Skarsgard’s look this time around to a “dead Transylvanian nobleman”, which would be a far cry from Max Schreck’s version from F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film (whose full title is Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror). This tease is also quite different from the marketing of the It remake, where the trailers had no problem showing what Skarsgard’s version of Pennywise would look like both makeup- and costume-wise.
As for how Skarsgard approached Nosferatu compared to It, he said, “Count Orlok was very different than Pennywise in a lot of ways. Orlok was even further away from who I am than Pennywise was, in the sense that my voice, posture, age, the look of it, it was just so far out there. That became the challenge. Before putting on the prosthetics, we explored so many weird things and looked into butoh, this sort of Japanese corpse dancing. We explored so many trippy things.” As if we weren’t already locked in to see Nosferatu, that Japanese corpse dancing had a role in the development of Skarsgard’s Orlok somehow bumped this even further on our must-see films for the remainder of 2024. Nosferatu rises on December 25th.