Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with Nosferatu, Focus Features‘ gothic horror from writer-director Robert Eggers. Set in 1830s Baltic Germany, Eggers reimagines the tale with Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok, a fictional character who originally appeared in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror directed by F.W. Murnau.
Focus Features released the film on Christmas Day, since becoming Eggers’ highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office with $53 million and counting. It picked up five Critics Choice nominations among its recognition this season among critics groups.
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In Eggers’ Nosferatu, estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) travels to Transylvania for a fateful meeting with Orlok, a vampiric prospective client. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), Hutter’s new bride, is left under the care of their friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin) in his absence. Plagued by visions and an increasing sense of dread, Ellen encounters a force far beyond her control. Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and Willem Dafoe also star.
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Eggers’ early fascination with Nosferatu ignited a passion for filmmaking that would shape his career. He became inspired by both Henrik Galeen’s screenplay and Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, and with high school classmate Ashley Kelly-Tata adapted the story for the stage, performing it at their school. Their production caught the eye of Edouard Langlois, who invited them to transfer it to New York’s Edwin Booth Theatre.
“Of course, it was the image and performance of Max Schreck that haunted me as a kid. There was something essential about the mysterious vampire and the simple fairytale of Nosferatu. And I am certain that when Hutter threw open the lid of Orlok’s sarcophagus, audiences gasped at the terror and imagined the stench of the undead monster. How could I find my own way there?” Eggers explains of his lifelong fascination since childhood about adapting the film.
Eggers’ reimagining of the Count is a masterclass in cinematic horror. His dark, rotting character, shrouded in shadow and amplified by an eerie soundtrack, is both terrifying and seductive. The stunning chiaroscuro visuals draw the audience into a world of Eggers’ gothic nightmare.
Eggers’ process included exploring his story in a different medium: “I ended up writing a novella with extensive backstories and scenes that I knew would never be in the film to understand why Nosferatu needed to be told again,” he says. “I had to write that novella to make it my own.”
Read his script below.