Robert Eggers’s upcoming Viking movie – The Northman – has been given yet another new release date, after having been pushed back several times. The latest date is 22 April 2022, according to Bloody Disgusting.
Anticipation has been high for some time for the follow-up to Eggers’ critically-acclaimed horror movie The Witch (2015) and his black-and-white sophomore feature The Lighthouse (2019). With casting news trickling in, excitement has been building further – with Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke all confirmed. Anya Taylor-Joy will also return from her star-making turn in The Witch and Willem Dafoe will also be working with Eggers for a second time, after starring in The Lighthouse. And finally, Icelandic singing legend Björk is also on board.
The Northman was originally slated for a 2021 release, but has been pushed back several times. It is unclear whether this is pandemic-related or something else – this is by far the biggest scale and budget Eggers has worked with and his painstaking attention to historical detail will certainly be something that takes time.
The official synopsis states that The Northman will be; “an epic revenge thriller that explores how far a Viking prince will go to seek justice for his murdered father.” Eggers has been clear that this project is so vast, he has had to change everything about his planning and pre-production process, bringing in many key collaborators at an early stage. According to IndieWire, words that have been used to describe it by the director and his cinematographer include; “the scale is so huge,” “this one is so complex” and “a lot of crowd scenes.”
Ralph Ineson (who recently played The Green Knight for David Lowery), another actor returning from The Witch, has also stirred up hype by saying that; “Alexander Skarsgård looks like an absolute beast…he’s made himself look like some kind of monster for the part.”
With the hugely-anticipated return to acting of Björk (who won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 for Dancer in the Dark) as a witch, no less – the wait until April is now feeling interminable.