Aaron Taylor-Johnson Is On the Hunt in First Official Look at WERWULF; Robert Eggers Teases New Story Details
The marketing campaign for Werwulf is finally kicking into gear, and after getting a moody glimpse of a fog-covered forest, we now have our first official look at Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Robert Eggers' upcoming medieval horror film.
The first trailer is expected to arrive on June 29, timed with the next full moon, but before that, Esquire has unveiled a promotional image featuring Taylor-Johnson as the film's mysterious lead.
While the image doesn't reveal much, it does offer our first real look at the cursed farmer at the center of Eggers' latest nightmare.
Eggers also shared a few intriguing details about the story, confirming that Taylor-Johnson plays a man whose life has been consumed by a horrifying curse.
"He's a farmer," Eggers says of the character. "He's a man who is cursed. It's a story about a man who is cursed and is trying to find salvation through love. He's a character who is haunted and in great pain. Nobody has a name in the movie. Aside from a dog. [Laughs.]"
If you're expecting the familiar werewolf mythology that has defined the genre for decades, Eggers says it's time to reset those expectations. Rather than leaning on the classic rules audiences already know, he's building something rooted in its own medieval world.
"Backpedaling away from influences and mythologies that do and don't have to do with the film, the cool thing about going back into the past is that you can kind of hit a reset button.
“So, all the clichés of being bitten by a werewolf and silver bullets and a lot of the stuff that has become almost campy doesn't exist in the mythology of this movie. So you don't need to have seen Lon Cheney Jr.'s The Wolf Man or An American Werewolf in London to get what's going on here."
That fresh approach is one of the things that makes Werwulf especially exciting. Instead of revisiting the same familiar rules, Eggers appears to be crafting his own mythology while keeping the setting grounded in the brutal realities of medieval life.
He also teased just how demanding the role was for Taylor-Johnson, particularly during the film's transformation sequences.
"It's a really brutal, unforgiving, merciless, grotesque world. More than ever, it's mud and blood and dung and rain and pain and suffering. Aaron's performance is incredibly harrowing.
“We'll say without a doubt that it's his best performance, and the stuff that he does physically in the transformation scenes are incredibly extreme. The emotional intensity he brings to role is equally as extreme."
Eggers didn't stop there. He also confirmed that Willem Dafoe will portray a hunter, while Lily-Rose Depp plays the emotional center of the story.
"Lily is truly transformative. There's a very clear physical change in her body and her makeup, but she inhabits a very different person that's very different from her and very different from any character she's ever played. She's Aaron's wife, and she's a mother of several children and also a farmer. She’s sort of the most gracious person in the film."
The newly released image can be viewed at the Esquire link. Horror has become Eggers' creative playground over the years. While The Northman is arguably his only feature without overt horror elements, The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu all embraced unsettling, atmospheric storytelling. Werwulf looks ready to continue that streak while pushing even further into darkness.
During a recent Film at Lincoln Center Q&A, Eggers summed up the movie in a way that's sure to grab horror fans' attention. "But yeah, it's a medieval werewolf movie. And it's... it's also the darkest thing I have ever written. By far."
We'll find out just how dark Werwulf gets when it claws its way into theaters on Christmas Day, 2026.