Robert Eggers Teases a Romeo & Juliet, Joking Its Ending Would Be a 'Break' From Horror
Robert Eggers is teasing a take on Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. At a post-screening Q&A for Werwulf, his own macabre film premiering on Christmas Day, the director joked that the famously tragic conclusion of the 16th-century romance would make a welcome “break” from his usual horror, Deadline reports. The line lands because the tragedy is common property — the audience is in on the ending before the lights go down — and because a filmmaker with a reputation for dread describing it as a holiday from his own instincts is funny in a way that is hard to tell apart from sincerity.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The joke is genre math: a director whose latest film is described as macabre calling a canonical tragedy a “break” is ribbing his own filmography as much as Shakespeare's.
Or he simply means a break in atmosphere rather than a lighter film. A change of scenery can be restful without promising anything sunnier on screen.