Peter Kujawski, the chairman of Focus Features, has revealed that ambient filmmaker Robert Eggers will achieve something unseen in his upcoming horror film, Werwulf, a 13th-century-set film focusing on a deadly creature stalking and terrorising local folklore in England. The cast is set to include Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Lily-Rose Depp, Ralph Ineson and Bodhi Rae Breathnach.
Werwulf is set to be the latest take on the Wolfman trope, which began in 1913 with Henry MacRae’s silent short film, The Wolfman, which was then famously reworked into 1935’s Werewolf of London and 1941’s The Wolf Man by director George Waggner.
The latter became a signature face of the Universal Classic Monsters and inspired a wave of filmmaking around werewolves, including John Landis’ 1981 classic An American Werewolf in London, as well as the remakes in 2010 by Joe Johnston and in 2025 by Leigh Whannell.
Despite these other titles to choose from, Kujawski has made the promise that Eggers’ latest work will bring a “whole other level” to the werewolf sub-genre in horror and “no one has seen a movie that looks or feels like this movie does.”
“To deliver the scares that this movie does, but also deliver a really, really intimate portrait of the experience of a werewolf—the emotional experience of a man going through that curse,” Kujawski explained. “It’s not just a plot device for Rob. It is a question of the foundational nature of man in the world.”
The chairman addresses that the director is seeking to explore the ways “That monsters can exist” and that “the horror of living is so felt and present in [Werwulf], that I really think audiences are gonna respond on a whole other level when they discover what he’s made.”
Eggers has previously remade the F. W. Murnau-directed Silent German Expressionist masterpiece, Nosferatu. The remake of the 1922 classic, itself an unofficial film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror novel, Dracula, starred Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp as a couple torn apart by Nosferatu, played by Bill Skarsgård. The success of the remake has seemingly kick-started a goal of re-telling the horror monster classics and novel adaptations as a whole.
The filmmaker’s other titles include the stylised, brain-buster The Lighthouse, the dark fantasy period film The Northman and the unnerving folk horror The Witch.
Kujawski assured that this upcoming release is “Like all of [Eggers’] films”.
“[Werwulf] has high-level terror and anxiety”, he concluded. “But it’s done in a way that gives you these weird shafts of light and hope.”
Werwulf hits cinemas on 25th December.
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