Sjón, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Eggers and Alexander Skarsgård at a screening of Egger’s latest film The Northman Photo: Tim P. Whitby (Getty Images)
With his third film on the way, director Robert Eggers reveals his true feelings about his 2015 debut The Witch. “Honestly, I can’t stand to watch The Witch now,” Eggers said in an interview with The Guardian.
“It’s not that it’s bad and the performances are great, but I wasn’t skilled enough as a filmmaker to bring what was in my head to the screen,” he continues.
The Witch received strong reviews and was a stellar debut for Eggers as well as Anya Taylor-Joy, who would go on to become a household name with Netflix sensation The Queen’s Gambit. The feature helped launch both – as well as distributor A24 – into the big time. Eggers followed The Witch with the surrealistic sailor film The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe.
“I managed to do that with The Lighthouse,” Eggers continues. “And The Northman, I’m proud of the film, but not everything is as I hoped it would be. So I want to do something with the scope and scale that I can actually bring what I envision to the screen.”
Eggers and Taylor-Joy have teamed up again for The Northman, a Viking revenge story set in Scandinavia, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Dafoe and Björk. It’s Egger’s biggest production to date, which meant he had to deal with test screenings and pressure from big production companies for the first time.
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“My first two films were all tested for marketing, but I didn’t have to change anything. So this was new, and as much as I didn’t like that process, I learned something from it,” Eggers said. “But beyond that, this is the film I wanted to make. This is my Director’s Cut. Studio pressure turned the film into what I originally suggested to them, which was the most entertaining Robert Eggers film I could make. Honestly, I couldn’t have done this without her pressure. I have a hard time telling a story with a beginning, middle and end, for goodness sake.”
Next, Eggers wants to return to his indie roots and create something on a much smaller scale than the expansive The Northman.
“I definitely want to do something smaller, and not just because of the pressure and pain, which is very real,” Eggers added, “but also because I’ve learned so much about ‘The Northman,’ which is really a Film was way too big for my britches. And I finally feel like I really know how to make a movie now, you know?