The star of upcoming films “Don’t Worry Darling” and “My Policeman” was reportedly linked to lead Robert Eggers’ reimagining of classic vampire film “Nosferatu,” as The New Yorker reported. Styles exited the project due to scheduling conflicts ahead of the release of his third studio album, “Harry’s House,” coming up May 20. Styles would have starred opposite frequent Eggers collaborator Anya Taylor-Joy in the remake of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent movie. Eggers and Joy originally worked together on “The Witch” before teaming up again for “The Northman,” also starring Ethan Hawke, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, and Alexander Skarsgård, in theaters April 22. The COVID-19 production delays around the “Hamlet”-esque Viking saga “The Northman” is in part what led to Eggers’ “Nosferatu” being put on the backburner. Per the New Yorker interview, Eggers was supposed to be in Prague shooting the bloodthirsty tale come March 2022. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke (who has shot all of Eggers’ films) is also slated to work on the feature.
This won’t be Eggers’ first time taking the vampire story into his own hands: The “Lighthouse” director co-directed a stage production of “Nosferatu” in high school, starring his twin younger brothers Max and Sam Eggers as gargoyles. “It was an indie horror in its day, a bit rough around the edges yet it’s one of the greatest and most haunting films ever made,” Eggers said of “Nosferatu” back in 2016 circa the days of “The Witch.” “The newly restored color-tinted versions are really impressive, but I still prefer the poor black-and-white versions made from scraps of 16mm prints. Those grimy versions have an uncanny mystery to them and helped build the myth of Max Shreck being a real vampire.” Meanwhile, the (however busted) casting of Styles comes after his film debut in Christopher Nolan’s 2017 WWII period piece “Dunkirk,” followed by an MCU cameo as Eros in Chloé Zhao’s “Eternals.” Styles is also rumored to be leading writer-director Dan Gilroy’s “Faster, Cheaper, Better” about a union foreman, a young entrepreneur, an indoor farm executive, and a tech billionaire grappling with the revolution of A.I. in the workplace. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
