Robert Eggers is currently out promoting his latest film The Northman, an epic telling of the legend of Amleth (which William Shakespeare based Hamlet on), and, in doing so, has been trying to get the word out there for the remake of Nosferatu that he’s been working on. News started to make the rounds when it was announced that Harry Styles was joining the project. Sadly, he had to leave due to scheduling conflicts, but that’s not saddest thing that Eggers has revealed about Styles’ involvement.
In an interview with IndieWire for The Northman, Eggers said that Styles left the movie and also pointed out that he was not going to be a vampire at all, but rather play the role of Hutter. The character in F.W. Murnau’s original 1922 Nosferatu went to the remote castle belonging to the vampire Count Orlok.
“It’s fallen apart twice,” Eggers explained of what would be his Nosferatu. “I’ve been trying to get the word out because the word did carry that Harry Styles was going to be in the movie. I just want to be clear that he was going to be Hutter and not Nosferatu himself.”
And, in true Eggers’ fashion (he is, after all, one of our strangest directors in the best of ways), he said that maybe it’s a sign that he shouldn’t remake the movie from the original director’s ghost. “I’ve been trying so hard,” the filmmaker said. “And I just wonder if Murnau’s ghost is telling me, like, you should stop.”
No vampire Harry for us
The fact that Styles was never going to be a vampire is something that is truly saddening to me. He’s the perfect kind of actor to play a vampire. Why? Because he has that sort of face that you instantly trust, and it would make for some absolutely great vampire content. Maybe not uh … this vampire though.
Styles is, after all, constantly working. He has Don’t Worry Darling coming out, starring Chris Pine and Florence Pugh (and directed by his partner Olivia Wilde), and on top of that, he’s in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Eros, and all of this is separate from his music career. And with that, he has a new album coming out next month!
He’s a busy man, so having to leave the Eggers project that seems to be in a constant struggle to get made isn’t that shocking. But I do hope that Eggers bringing up his remake enough will get it moving because Nosferatu is a classic and a story that, I feel, has sort of been lost throughout the years with other vampires taking over the reins. So hopefully, his constant talking about his film will help get the word out there about it.
But sadly, we will not be seeing Harry Styles in a Robert Eggers movie quite yet (but he did say that Styles is great and so maybe, in the future, we can see the two working together). Anyway, maybe we should all go stand on rooftops and scream “ROBERT EGGERS DIRECTING NOSFERATU” so that it actually happens.
(image: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
