Robert Eggers’ Next Movie is an Unexpected Adaptation of William Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET
Director Robert Eggers is apparently trading werewolves, vampires, and Viking bloodshed for star-crossed lovers. Once Robert Eggers finishes unleashing Werwulf in theaters this Christmas, the filmmaker behind The Witch, The Northman, and Nosferatu will turn his attention to a new adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
It’s a surprising choice for Eggers, but when you look back, he’s been dropping hints about this project for years. A 2022 New Yorker profile published around the release of The Northman revealed that Eggers was researching and writing “something Elizabethan.”
He mentioned the mysterious project again in an interview with GQ shortly afterward, while saying that nothing was guaranteed. “I’ve written all kinds of things that haven’t gotten made.”
Eggers also revealed around that time that he’d been playing plenty of “Tudor and Stuart music” at home. The project eventually disappeared from the conversation as the director moved on to Nosferatu, which arrived in 2024, followed by Werwulf.
Now we know what all that Elizabethan research was leading toward. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Romeo and Juliet is expected to be Eggers’ next feature, with Focus Features landing the film after competing against A24, Sony, and Warner Bros. in what the trade described as “a bidding war.”
Focus Features has become a familiar home for Eggers, having also released Nosferatu and Werwulf. Anyone familiar with Eggers’ obsession with historical authenticity probably already knows this won’t be a typical trip to Verona.
His films tend to immerse audiences in the language, customs, clothing, architecture, and atmosphere of their respective periods, and Romeo and Juliet appears to be following the same approach.
THR reports: “Befitting a filmmaker who is known for his meticulous attention to detail in capturing a time period, even when it comes to dialogue, sources say that this adaptation will feature actors speaking in Olde English.”
That should immediately separate Eggers’ movie from many of the Shakespeare adaptations we’ve seen over the years.
Baz Luhrmann famously went in the opposite direction with his 1996 Romeo + Juliet, keeping Shakespeare’s dialogue while dropping Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes into a modern, hyper-stylized world filled with guns, cars, neon, and pop culture.
Eggers going full period piece with the material sounds like it could make for a fascinating contrast. With the kinds of films he makes, it’s also easy to imagine Verona becoming a grimy, candlelit nightmare.
The movie also appears to have a sizable budget. THR noted that “sources say the deal for the project is in the high-seventy millions, which will include filmmaker and talent fees as well as the budget for the production.”
That would seemingly make Romeo and Juliet less expensive than The Northman, while still putting it above Eggers’ other films, including Nosferatu.
There’s still plenty we don’t know, particularly who Eggers plans to cast as Romeo and Juliet. More importantly, there’s another casting mystery that needs to be solved. Which character is Willem Dafoe going to play?!
As for Eggers’ previously announced A Christmas Carol, that project appears to be waiting its turn for now, meaning Johnny Depp’s Ebenezer Scrooge movie won’t have to compete with Eggers’ take.
For the moment, Eggers has Werwulf coming this Christmas and Shakespeare waiting for him afterward. Romeo and Juliet definitely wasn’t the project I expected to see next from him, but an obsessive Robert Eggers period adaptation of Shakespeare sounds great and I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out!