Monster lover Robert Eggers moves on to Werwulf

Witches and vampires and werewolves, oh my! It’s a Halloween refrain and also a mostly accurate summary of Robert Eggers‘ IMDb page. In his ascent as an auteur Eggers has demonstrated a penchant for the monstrous and a love of gothic horror, so it only makes sense for him to follow up his hit vampire flick Nosferatu with another beastly tale, reportedly titled Werwulf. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Eggers will direct the film from a script he co-wrote with Sjón, with whom he previously collaborated on The Northman. 

Focus Features will try to recapture the success of Nosferatu by releasing this next film on Christmas Day 2026. Other than that, few details are yet known. However, if there’s another thing we know Eggers loves, it’s meticulous historical research, which will again come into play for Werwulf. Sources tell THR that “the story is set in 13th century England” and the script “features dialogue that was true to the time period and has translations and annotations for those uninitiated in Old English.” (Us? Uninitiated in Old English? Please!) 

Eggers’ historical research came in handy with Nosferatu when he set out to reclaim the vampire from Twilight‘s sparkly rebrand. “I think we deserve a scary, smelly corpse again,” the filmmaker told The Standard in December. “We’ve gone all the way to Edward Cullen, where vampires are not scary. So how do we go in the complete opposite direction of that? Vampires were scary enough that people used to dig up corpses and chop them into bits and set them on fire.”

Of course, Twilight also de-fanged werewolves—recall, if you will, the surprisingly hairless figure of the un-transformed shapeshifter Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Your mileage may vary on the attractiveness of cinema’s current shapeshifter, Wolf Man, but monster movies are undeniably en vogue. Eggers’ lane is apparently to make them as beastly (and folklore-accurate) as possible. Here’s a humble pitch: wouldn’t it be fun to cast Eggers’ The Lighthouse star Robert Pattinson in this one? Pattinson could play film’s hottest vampire and its ugliest Werwulf. Something to think about!