Chris Columbus, the director of household favorites like “Dwelling Alone,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and the primary two “Harry Potter” films, is an unlikely producer on certainly one of 2024’s extra talked about and grizzly horror movies, Robert Eggers‘ “Nosferatu.”
In reality, Columbus has produced Eggers’ movies relationship again to “The Witch,” and he’s labored with Eggers to get “Nosferatu” to the display for over a decade. He might direct lots of household movies, however he’s a movie historical past buff (simply try Columbus’s picks from the TCM lineup) and nonetheless shares sensibilities with somebody like Eggers (to be truthful, he additionally wrote the script for “Gremlins,” which initially was a Arduous-R horror movie).
In an interview with THR, Columbus defined how an unlucky expertise engaged on “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” influenced him to be a greater producer when it got here to working with different auteur filmmakers.
Columbus spoke about his manufacturing firm Maiden Voyage alongside his daughter and manufacturing associate Eleanor Columbus, and he stated the guiding ethos of the corporate is to by no means say “No” to a director, one thing that occurred to him on “Sorcerer’s Stone.” Columbus stated he was upset with the Satan’s Snare scene within the movie and hoped to reinforce it with CGI, however a producer squashed the thought.
“One of many executives stated to me, ‘Nicely, it doesn’t matter if that scene is inferior to the opposite scenes within the movie. It’s nice,’” Columbus recalled. “And I believed, ‘I by no means wish to have that angle. Each scene must be nice, and you must assist the filmmaker understand their imaginative and prescient.’ So after I heard that about my very own movie, I advised myself that I’m by no means going to say that if I’m producing for another person. I as an alternative say to the filmmaker, ‘We’ve got that can assist you discover the very best means of getting this made.’”
Eggers has been sitting along with his imaginative and prescient for “Nosferatu” for years, and Columbus stated they obtained a good quantity of push again from different studios that didn’t get it.
“We obtained some hideous strategies about who ought to star within the movie and plot factors and script factors, however Rob was very adamant about not altering something,” Columbus stated. “It’s not that he wouldn’t change a phrase of his script, however he had a imaginative and prescient. He’s lived with it since he was 9 years previous for God’s sake. So he wasn’t going to shift, and that was scary to a couple folks at different studios.”
Columbus was fast to make clear that the “hideous” casting strategies weren’t Anya Taylor-Pleasure and Harry Types, each of whom have been initially connected to “Nosferatu” earlier than Lily Rose-Depp and Nicholas Hoult joined the mission.
“I want I may inform you who we’re speaking about, but it surely was nobody that Rob advised,” Columbus stated. “They have been actors of an American descent, who’re most likely of their sixties, who’ve completely no connection to Depend Orlok in anyway, if that helps.”
Try Columbus’ full interview with THR right here.