Robert Eggers couldn’t get Anya Taylor-Joy to appear in Nosferatu due to scheduling conflicts, but he has secured Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The odds-on favorite to be cast as the next James Bond has now been officially confirmed in the new vampire film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Taylor-Johnson joins what is quickly shaping up to be a star-studded cast for Nosferatu. He’ll feature alongside Bill Skarsgård as featured vampire Count Orlok, Lily Rose-Depp and Nicholas Hoult as the married couple he haunts, and Willem Dafoe and Emma Corrin in unspecified roles.
Taylor-Johnson is currently the the favorite to be cast as the next James Bond according to UK odds makers. Ladbrokes gives him 13/8 odds to be the next Bond, ahead of Henry Cavill at 5/2 and James Norton at 7/2. The top three picks are well ahead of past favorites like Tom Hardy (9/1), Regé-Jean Page (10/1), and Idris Elba (25/1).
The next Bond film isn’t expected to go before cameras until 2024, giving Taylor-Johnson plenty of time to shoot Nosferatu in Prague over the next two months.
Prior to the official confirmation of his participation in Nosferatu, Taylor-Johnson shared a picture of himself doing a handstand outside Prague Castle to his Instagram.
Taylor-Johnson just wrapped filming the Spider-Man spin-off Kraven the Hunter where he stars as the titular supervillain, as well action movie The Fall Guy, an adaptation of the 80s TV series in which he stars alongside Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. He also recently had featured supporting roles in films like Bullet Train, Tenet, and The King’s Man.
Nosferatu is currently filming at Barrandov Studio in Prague. Additional location across the Czech Republic, standing in for Gothic Transylvania, have yet to be revealed.
Who will Taylor-Johnson play? We guess he’ll portray Knock, Nosferatu‘s version of Renfield from Bram Stoker’s original novel Dracula. Ironically, co-star Hoult will star as the same character in the upcoming Renfield, which stars Nicolas Cage as Count Dracula and will be released in cinemas next month.
A remake of the 1922 movie of the same name, the original Nosferatu was a thinly-veiled copy of Dracula, and the heirs to Bram Stoker’s estate sued its makers. Many prints of the film were subsequently destroyed, and at one time the film was considered lost.
Dracula had fallen into public domain by the time Werner Herzog made his own version in 1979, and the filmmaker used the character names from the original novel. Both versions of Nosferatu partially filmed in the former Czechoslovakia: the 1979 version at Pernštejn Castle in South Moravia and 1922 version at Vrátna Valley, Dolný Kubín, and Orava Castle in what is now Slovakia.
Eggers’ Nosferatu will be the third version to film in Czech or Slovak lands. But it might not be the only version to see an upcoming release. Another take on Nosferatu, starring The Shape of Water‘s Doug Jones as Count Orlok, has been in post-production since 2017.
