Those of us who were excited for “The Northman” to be a Skarsgård family reunion may be disappointed to hear that Bill Skarsgård has reportedly dropped out of Robert Eggers‘ upcoming Viking revenge saga due to a “scheduling nightmare during COVID.”
READ MORE: Björk & Kate Dickie Join Robert Eggers’ ‘The Northman’ Viking Revenge Movie
While promoting his role in Netflix‘s “The Devil All the Time,” Skarsgård talked with Collider about being forced to drop out of “The Northman” due to scheduling conflicts caused by the COVID pandemic.
“No, unfortunately. It’s been a scheduling nightmare during COVID,” the actor said when asked about his role in Eggers’ film. “It is what it is. It’s a big shame. Eggers is one of the great filmmakers out there and working with my brother…I don’t want to talk about it, it’s going to make me burst into tears.”
This is certainly sad news for those wanting to see Bill and Alexander Skarsgård act in the same film, but “The Northman” still has a mighty impressive cast. After Eggers cashed in on the success of “The Witch” to parlay Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe to star in his sophomore feature, “The Lighthouse,” he turned to a star-studded cast for “The Northman.” Last we heard, Icelandic singer Björk was joining the cast as the Slav Witch, joining Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgård, Kate Dickie, Eggers’ “The Witch” star Anya Taylor-Joy, his “The Lighthouse” star Willem Dafoe and Claes Bang.
Though we don’t know much about “The Northman,” we do know that Eggers describes it as a Viking revenge saga set in Iceland at the turn of the 10th century, and Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón co-wrote the script with Eggers. The filmmaker also described his upcoming feature as so massive he had to change the way he approaches pre-production