Summary
- Despite not being a holiday movie, Nosferatu had a record-breaking $40 million opening weekend.
- The film has an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and features unique and graphic elements.
- The box office success of the film is a change for director Robert Eggers, known for smaller films with critical acclaim.
It’s not very often than a horror movie is among the best opening movies of Christmas weekend. Especially when that horror movie has nothing to do with the holiday. Nevertheless, Nosferatu is raising eyebrows and hauling in big money despite as audiences rush to the theaters to see a lineup that involves a remake of a classic vampire movie.
Nosferatu is the latest project from Robert Eggers and is the famed director’s take on a movie that was first released all the way back in 1929. This film stars Bill Skarsgård as the titular vampire, otherwise known as Count Orlok and the character wreaks havoc as several innocent bystanders such as Nicholas Hoult as Thomas Hutter, Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Friedrich Harding, Emma Corrin as Anna Harding and Willem Dafoe as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz.
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Nosferatu Creeps Into Record Debut For Robert Eggers
It turns out that the all-star ensemble cast was attractive enough to audiences that Nosferatu scored a $40 million opening weekend that included a theater debut on Christmas Day. While that number couldn’t beat Sonic the Hedgehog 3‘s $38 million across the Friday-Sunday stretch and Mufasa’s $37 million over the same traditional weekend, the number was quite impressive for a traditional horror film and was very easily a record for an Eggers’ directed film. Over the course of the regular three-day weekend, the movie still scored an impressive $20 million.
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That number should hardly be surprising considering how well the vampire movie reimagining has fared among critics. Nosferatu holds a “fresh” 86% rating on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes and has had people excited to see this version of Count Orlok since the first trailers started hitting the internet. That’s despite the fact that the director has made it clear he’s given the story its own spin, including having the vampire drink from people’s chests rather than their necks. He’s also included some rather graphic sexual touches, including full frontal nudity of Skarsgard’s monster, complete with a prosthetic.
At least part of the success has to be a cast that has some very talented actors in it. At least one in Willem Dafoe (who is also a Robert Eggers veteran) has some experience doing a Nosferatu remake, though this time he didn’t play the titular monster and was instead one of those doing battle with Orlok.
For Eggers, the successful opening weekend is a change from movies that are generally well received by critics but don’t have the marketing campaign or financial backing that Nosferatu did. The Witch, The Lighthouse (starring Defoe) and The Northman (starring Bill Skarsgard’s brother Alexander) have all been given rave reviews but none came close to have the kind of box office numbers that this vampire classic film was able to hit. The numbers should give movie studios even more reason to allow the famed director to work on more mainstream projects while still having the freedom to work on the smaller scale films he’s done so well with.
Nosferatu
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Source: Collider