Following up his break-out horror hit The Witch and his black-and-white buddy comedy of sorts, The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers is returning in 2022 with his biggest production yet. The Northman is a Viking epic, co-written by Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, and ahead of an April 2022 theatrical release, Focus Features has debuted the first trailer.
Set at the turn of the 10th century in Iceland, the epic stars Alexander Skarsgård as a Viking prince out to take revenge over his murdered father. The cast also includes Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Björk, Ralph Ineson, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Claes Bang.
“It’s an enormous movie. I saw a four-minute montage of some of the stuff they’d already shot and I was really blown away. The marriage of Rob Eggers’ imagination and Viking folklore… Jesus, man,” Ineson told NME earlier this year. “Alexander Skarsgård looks like an absolute beast. [There’s] a scene where he beats this guy in a battle; bends down and rips his throat out with his teeth, screams to the gods and he’s got his shirt off – and you think: ‘My god that’s not a bodybuilder doing a scene, that’s like a proper serious actor!’ He’s made himself look like some kind of monster for the part, the dedication’s incredible. I think it will be a bit of a masterpiece, to be honest. If I was to put bets on any film being an absolute banger, it would be that one.”
See the trailer below.
The Northman opens on April 22, 2022.