Robert Eggers loves two things: intense imagery and the past. From The Witch to The Lighthouse and The Northman, he’s proven to be an expert on wild stories set in bygone eras. After the success of his most recent movie, Nosferatu, he’s branching out into other genres, although he still refuses to set a movie in the present day, telling Rotten Tomatoes, “The idea of having to photograph a car makes me ill.”
Instead, he’s taking on two wildly different projects. According to Deadline, Eggers will write and direct a sequel to the 1986 Jim Henson movie Labyrinth, a fantasy epic that will take him out of his comfort zone. But his other upcoming project is as on-brand as it gets — and features a bizarre twist he’s been trying to pull off for years.
Robert Eggers is venturing back to the 13th century for Werwulf.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Eggers will also rejoin Nosferatu distributor Focus Features on Werwulf, a horror movie currently slated for Christmas 2026. As you might guess from the title, this isn’t your typical werewolf movie. It’s set in 13th-century England, and the dialogue is true to the time, meaning characters will speak in Old English with subtitles.
This won’t come as a huge surprise for Eggers fans. In 2022, he told IndieWire that if budget and marketability weren’t issues, he would have made The Northman entirely in Old Norse. It looks like he’s finally getting the opportunity to go very, very old-school with Werwulf.
With Werwulf, Robert Eggers is achieving what he couldn’t with The Northman.
In the wake of the middling reception to Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, this movie may be a boon for the werewolf creature feature as a whole, as long as the Old English dialogue isn’t too demanding for the average moviegoer. But Nosferatu, and its new take on Count Orlok, certainly proved that audiences can handle a little weirdness. Hopefully, Werwulf can push that fact to the limit. At the very least, it will certainly sound like nothing else.
