This is just coming in, and it sounds ridiculous on paper, but the more I think about, the more it kinda, sorta, makes sense.
Acccording to THR, Robert Eggers, who has already taken on witches, vikings, a vampire, and now werewolves, is turning to two teenagers in love. He's lined up a “Romeo and Juliet” adaptation at Focus Features. Focus beat out A24, Sony, and Warner Bros. in a bidding war for it.
Eggers will direct and produce. Word is the deal lands somewhere in the high-$70M range. That's serious money for a Shakespeare adaptation. Then again, Eggers turned “Nosferatu” into a genuine 2024 box office surprise, so the studios clearly believe him when he says audiences will show up. The plan is for this to be his next film.
Weren't Eggers's detractors (and I can sometimes be one of them) asking him to step outside his comfort zone for a change? Well, he's doing it. Or will he turn the most famous love story ever told into another nightmarish vision from hell?
No surprise, sources say the actors will be speaking the original Shakespearean language. Of course they will. This is the guy who made Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson talk in 19th-century maritime dialect, and who researched Viking-era speech for “The Northman.” Nobody should expect otherwise from Eggers.
The play has been filmed plenty of times, most famously in Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version and in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 neon fever dream “Romeo + Juliet,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Eggers doing it feels different, though. I'm picturing something candlelit, muddy, and doom-soaked, with the violence and tragedy kicked up a notch.
Eggers doesn't have an overall deal at Focus, but he keeps coming back to the Universal specialty arm. They released “Nosferatu,” “The Northman,” and they have his next film, “Werwulf,” which reunites him with Nosferatu stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Lily-Rose Depp. Like Nosferatu, it opens on Christmas Day.
More to come …
Robert Eggers, who has already taken on witches, vikings, a vampire, and now werewolves, is turning to two teenagers in love. He's lined up a “Romeo and Juliet” adaptation at Focus Features.