LOS ANGELES-‘The Witch’ director Robert Eggers wants to remake classic silent horror film ‘Nosferatu’ because he wants to make vampires horrifying again.
The 36-year-old director plans to sink his teeth into the remake of F.W. Murnau’s iconic 1922 flick, and says he picked the movie because he believes the mysterious Count Orlok is closer to a ‘’traditional folk vampire’’ than the romanticised versions seen in other movies, including Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’.
He said: ‘’I definitely hope to create, to tell some stories on larger canvases, which does mean making something that is narratively more broad. ‘’I mean, that movie [‘Nosferatu’] is really important to me for many reasons, but I think ‘Nosferatu’ is closer to the folk vampire.
‘’The vampire [in ‘Nosferatu’] is a combination of the folk vampire, of the literary vampire that actually has its roots in England before Germany, and also [has roots in] Albin Grau, the producer/production designer’s occultist theories on vampires.
‘’So he’s not a traditional folk vampire but it’s much closer to that than Stoker, even though obviously Stoker is using a lot of folklore that he’s researched to create his vampire. But Dracula is finally much more an extension of the literary vampire that was started by John Polidori, based on Byron.’’
And whilst it’s too early to think about casting for his remake, Robert would be keen to get Willem Dafoe on board, after working with him on his new movie ‘The Lighthouse’.