Oscar nominees Jarin Blaschke and Craig Lathrop on collaborating with Robert Eggers on ‘Nosferatu’… and the upcoming ‘Werwulf’
Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and production designer Craig Lathrop know better than almost anybody else what working with filmmaker Robert Eggers is like. Blaschke has been friends with Eggers for years and has made six films with the director, including two shorts and all four of Eggers’s feature films. Lathrop, meanwhile, has worked with Blaschke and Eggers since Eggers’s debut movie, The Witch.
But neither acclaimed craftsperson — Oscar nominees this year in their respective categories for Nosferatu — feels like they’ve reached a peak.
More from GoldDerby
“It has just been kind of one miracle after another, as far as I can tell,” Blascke tells Gold Derby.
“I feel that way,” adds Lathrop. “Whether this film is a ‘peak,’ I would say that we’ve grown every film together as a group. Not that a lot of that wasn’t there from the very beginning. So if you’re saying we’re peaking right now, I hope we’re not.”
SEERobert Eggers teases ‘Nosferatu’ extended cut: ‘More Willem Dafoe’
Eggers’s history with Nosferatu dates back decades, to when he was first exposed to the F.W. Murnau’s 1922 classic on VHS as a child. As the legend goes, as a teenager, Eggers even produced a stage production of Nosferatu in black-and-white (with the actors wearing black-and-white makeup to create the desired effect). His first script for Nosferatu was finished almost a decade ago.
So Blaschke and Lathrop had plenty of time to think about how they wanted the film to look, down to the ceiling height in certain sets to both accommodate for the size of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsg?rd), the blood-sucking titular ghoul, and Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), the real estate agent who unfortunately winds up in Orlok’s orbit.
“We had that silhouette in mind when it came to Orlok,” Lathrop says of framing the tall Skarsg?rd — who stands at 6-foot-4 before adding Orlok’s heeled boots. “But with Hutter, when he arrives at the Romanian Inn, I got all the actors’s heights beforehand. I wanted to make sure that everybody could walk under those beams, except for Hutter, so he had to duck his head every time he was walking through there. And that was very deliberate. I just wanted to make sure that he felt uncomfortable.”
Released on Christmas Day, Nosferatu is the biggest hit of Eggers’s career and his most Oscar-nominated film. The Focus Features released received four nominations for its crafts, including Best Cinematography (Blaschke’s second nomination for an Eggers film following The Lighthouse), Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hair, and Best Costumes.
“I think we just have more crafts than we’ve ever had,” Blaschke says of the film’s success and how it compared with his initial expectations. “I feel like, OK, when I was in film school, this is the kind of a level I hope to achieve. I have such a breadth of looks, sets, and locations — it was so rich. It was very satisfying. Regarding expectations we had when we first read this in 2015, this is just a much better movie than if we made it then.”
While Blaschke and Lathrop continue on the awards campaign trail — final Oscar winner voting begins on Feb. 11 — they’re also considering what’s next. Eggers and Focus Features have reunited for Werwulf, a lycanthropic horror film set in 13th-century England and scheduled to arrive in theaters on Christmas Day in 2026.
“It’s very early days, but we’re shooting relatively soon — at least for us,” Blaschke says of the project. “So we’re still discussing what this movie looks and feels like. We can’t say anything else — not just because we wouldn’t but also because we need to figure it out.”
Nosferatu is nominated for four Oscars.
Best of GoldDerby
Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
