Today, thanks to the good folks at Entertainment Weekly, we’re getting our first look at Willem Dafoe’s character in Robert Eggers’ forthcoming Nosferatu remake, an unhinged vampire hunter by the name of Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz. From the looks of things, he’ll be giving Dafoe’s The Lighthouse character a run for his money in the crazy department.
Let’s take a look…
Says Entertainment Weekly:
“Dafoe plays a vampire hunter named Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz in Eggers’ Prague-shot take on director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 horror classic. That film was itself an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and was previously remade by Werner Herzog as 1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre. While the character from Murnau’s film upon which Eggers based Dafoe’s professor is on the periphery of the action, the director says he amped up Von Franz to be a ‘crazy vampire hunter’ — a character, he says, ‘I’ve always loved and related to.'”
Eggers also mentions that the scene glimpsed in the photo above involved Dafoe acting alongside 2,000 rats (pretty much the last thing you’d want to encounter in a burning tomb), and goes on to explain why we’ve seen just about every other cast member from Nosferatu except Bill Skarsgård, who’ll be playing the film’s deadly vampire:
“I’m trying to not give too much away, but Bill totally transforms into something that is very unique.” Eggers does let on that the actor worked with an opera coach to lower his voice an octave. “People are going to think it’s all digital tampering, but he put in the work,” the filmmaker continues. “I’m super excited to see what audiences make of Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok.”
We’re guessing they’re gonna hold the reveal of Skarsgård’s appearance until the last possible second, but boy are we excited to get a look at him when the time comes. Stay tuned for that, and more on Nosferatu, between now and the film’s December 25th, 2024 arrival in theaters (That’s quite a ways away, so be sure to head over to EW to read the rest of their preview while you’re waiting).
