Hot off the surprise hit of his sea-mad mind-tripThe Lighthouse, directorRobert Eggersnext sets his sights onThe Northman, a Viking-era revenge tale. Back in October of 2019, it was reported that brothersAlexander SkarsgårdandBill Skarsgårdwould join the cast, marking their first film together since Bill’s 2000 feature debut,White Water Fury. Alas, some bummer news: While speaking to Bill Skarsgård about Netflix’sThe Devil All the Time, Collider confirmed that the actor had to drop out of Eggers' film due to scheduling conflicts brought on by the COVID pandemic.
Here’s exactly what Skarsgård said:
“No, unfortunately. It’s been a scheduling nightmare during COVID. 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.”
Egers has lined himself upa heck of a castforThe Northman. In addition to Alexander Skarsgård, Oscar-winnerNicole Kidmanis set to star, along withThe LighhousestarWillem DafoeandAnya Taylor-Joy, who shot to stardom in 2015 thanks to Eggers' feature-directing debut,The Witch. Eggers reportedly co-wroteThe Northmanwith Icelandic poet/novelistSjón.
As opposed to his first two, mostyl-contained features, Eggers has saidThe Northmanis so expansive in scope that he had to change his usual hyper-focused attention to detail. Here’s what the filmmakersaid back in April:
“There’s many locations in the film, so we were constantly going on scouts to find places or reassess places that we have found and we’re building sets there. We’re designing all these worlds, building these villages, we’re making thousands of costumes and props, training the horses the things they’ll need to do, designing the shots of the films. There’s a lot more storyboarding. Generally I only storyboard the scenes that have visual effects or animals and stunts, things where all the departments need to be on the same page for it to work out. But this movie there is rarely a scene that isn’t on a boat or doesn’t have a lot of extras. We’re storyboarding most of the film, which is taking a lot of time.”
Be on the lookout for the rest of our interview with Bill Skarsgård, and check out exactly what he had to say aboutThe Northmanin the player above. For more on Eggers' new film, here’s ourlatest interview with the director.
