A new look at Nosferatu is here, and it shows Willem Dafoe looking absolutely terrifying, surrounded by flames.
The picture comes courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, and, speaking to the publication, director Robert Eggers revealed that Dafoe is playing a "crazy vampire hunter" named Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. The character also exists in F.W. Murnau's 1922 movie on which Eggers' is based, but the director has indicated that he's dialled up the character to the more unhinged version we see below.
See an exclusive first look at Willem Dafoe as a 'crazy vampire hunter' in Robert Eggers' 'Nosferatu.' https://t.co/OYC4Glm50VDecember 18, 2023
"[Eggers] gets better and better and better, gets more articulate, more on top of it," Dafoe said recently of the film. "He's so clear when he works. It opens in December of next year, which is a long time away. Trying to be an optimist, I think the studio must feel very strong about it, because that's quite a tough slot, so I'm excited about that. I saw some footage when we were shooting, and I can honestly say, visually, it was like unlike anything I have seen… The look of it and how it was shot was extraordinary."
Interestingly enough, Dafoe also described his character as "kind of a Van Helsing type of character," which tracks with what Eggers has revealed – Van Helsing, of course, is the vampire hunter from Bram Stoker's Dracula (the '22 Nosferatu movie is also an unofficial take on that novel).
Eggers' Nosferatu stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, and Dafoe.
The film's official logline promises a "a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire
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