Robert Eggers says that Bill Skarsgård is completely “transformed” in his upcoming Nosferatu movie.
Speaking with Total Film Magazine, Eggers discussed Skarsgård’s Nosferatu performance and noted that it’s completely unlike anything the Barbarian and It actor has ever done before.
“There are things that are Schreck-like but I felt we had to do something else,” Eggers said. “Basically I was like, ‘What would a dead Transylvanian nobleman actually look like for real?’ Bill lost a tremendous amount of weight.”
Eggers continued, “He’s so transformed in every aspect that I don’t know if people will give him the credit. You can see Bill [as Pennywise] in the It make-up; you can’t detect any Bill here. He worked with an opera coach to lower his voice an octave. I think people are going to think we treated it digitally, but that’s his performance.”
Total Film Magazine also revealed a new Nosferatu image, shared on Twitter by Discussing Film, featuring Nicholas Hoult, which can be viewed below:
What else do we know about Nosferatu?
A remake of Henrik Galeen’s silent film of the same name from 1922, Nosferatu will see Skarsgård play Count Orlok, while Hoult is playing Thomas Hunter. The movie also stars Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hunter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Friedrich Harding, Emma Corrin as Anna Harding, Willem Dafoe as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, Simon McBurney as Herr Knock, and Ralph Ineson as Dr. Wilhelm Sievers.
The screenplay is written by Eggers, who previously made 2015’s The Witch, 2019’s The Lighthouse, and 2022’s The Northman. Eggers is also producing the film alongside Jeff Robinov, John Graham, Chris Columbus, and Eleanor Columbus.
“Yeah, it’s a scary film,” Eggers previously told Empire about Nosferatu. “It’s a horror movie. It’s a Gothic horror movie. And I do think that there hasn’t been an old-school Gothic movie that’s actually scary in a while. And I think that the majority of audiences will find this one to be the case.”
Nosferatu releases on December 25, 2024, from Focus Features
