With Robert Eggers' Nosferatu now playing in theaters worldwide, Focus Features has decided to unveil our first official look at Bill Skarsgård as the titular vampire, Count Orlok.
We have seen several leaked shots already (see below), but this featurette does keep Orlok in the shadows and only shows his face very briefly. So, if you haven't seen the movie yet, you're safe enough giving this a watch, because you'll see a lot more of the character in the actual film.
This new take on Orlok has proven to be divisive, but Eggers has previously explained that he wanted to change up the classic creature design for something that more closely resembled an "undead nobleman."
The filmmaker revealed his thought process behind the vampire's look during a recent interview with Deadline.
“What would a dead Transylvanian nobleman actually look like? That was basically where I started from, and I wanted to still acknowledge Max Schreck’s makeup design.”
Makeup designer David White elaborated while speaking to Variety.
"It was always going to be new and fresh because we had Bill Skarsgård to work with. Bill has a great bone structure and wonderful expressive eyes, and is such a great actor. There are echoes of the original Max Schreck version in the look, but only fleeting echoes. I feel our Orlok gives a much deeper, more visual interpretation, and is definitely standalone."
As for Skarsgård, while he would ultimately get used to the design, he was far from convinced upon first seeing the prosthetics he'd be required to wear.
“Bill sees the sculpt of the bust and he freaks out, and he’s like, ‘That doesn’t look anything like me, this guy didn’t look like me when he was even alive,'" recalls Eggers. "'What the f*ck?’ He wasn’t mean, but he was alarmed. And I was like, ‘Well, that’s the point, that you’re totally transforming into somebody else.’ And then, he’s putting the makeup on and he’s like, ‘Ugh, I look like a goblin. This is terrible.’ And then, once they put the hair on, even though the makeup wasn’t totally finished, I saw the first moment when he was like, ‘OK, this is cool. This is a person.’ I started to see him in the mirror, playing around, trying to do something."
Check out the images at the links below.
3 shots of the same moment from 1922, 1979, 2024
byu/Lonehawaiianwolf inNosferatuMovie
A new take on F. W. Murnau's 1922 version and Werner Herzog's take in 1979, Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.
Written for the screen and directed by Robert Eggers, Nosferatu stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and Willem Dafoe.