The anticipation for films coming out in 2024 just got slightly bigger. While we were all presuming it would arrive next year, Focus Features’ “Nosferatu” horror from filmmaker Robert Eggers is coming much later than expected. And with a much bigger launchpad. Focus Features has announced the movie is being dated on December 25, 2024. Yep, it’s a big scary horror movie on Christmas Day, which is unusual and non-traditional and likely means Focus has a lot of confidence in the picture.
READ MORE: ‘Nosferatu’ First Look: Robert Eggers Is Aiming To Create A Scary Gothic Horror
The film is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake. Eggers is coming off of Focus Features’ “The Northman,” the big Viking epic that demonstrated his ability to scale up his indies vastly. It didn’t make as much at the box office as Focus hoped, but clearly, the studio was impressed with what he created regardless.
“Nosferatu” stars Lily Rose-Depp and Bill Skårsgard in the lead roles, with Nicholas Hoult as the main supporting player. Willem Dafoe and Emma Corrin (“The Crown”) also star alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kraven the Hunter”), Simon McBurney (“The Conjuring 2”) and Ralph Ineson (“The Witch”).
“The audacious filmmaking of Robert Eggers is always a gift for fans, and we can promise that his Nosferatu is planning quite the Christmas feast,” Peter Kujawski, Chairman of Focus Features, said in a statement.
The release date could have a lot of meaning and impact. First off, if Focus is saving it as a big tentpole movie for Xmas 2024, that means its chances of showing up super early, like Cannes, seem negligible. Sure, it could still premiere at Venice or Telluride in September to build buzz, but the company won’t want to let the cat out of the bag earlier than that (Paramount and Apple did so with “Killers Of The Flower Moon,” but it’s a different kind of film and release).
A potential greater meaning? Focus and Universal are very aligned; Comcast owns Focus as a division of Universal Pictures. And what’s also currently on the schedule for Christmas 2024? Jordan Peele’s untitled 2024 horror film and this could signal that film—which presumably didn’t shoot this year unless it did so under a veil of immense secrecy—won’t be ready, and “Nosferatu” is essentially taking its place.
“Yeah, it’s a scary film. It’s a horror movie. It’s a Gothic horror movie,” Eggers recently clarified to Empire. “And I do think that there hasn’t been an old-school Gothic movie that’s actually scary in a while. And I think that the majority of audiences will find this one to be the case.”
One must also wonder if the December date also makes “Nosferatu” something of an awards contender, but studios generally save that big Xmas date for blockbusters. Either way, you know what your Christmas list for next year is, and you know it super early.