Robert Eggers Wants a “Break" From Horror, So He's Making ‘Romeo & Juliet'

Only Robert Eggers would describe ‘Romeo & Juliet’ as a palate cleanser.

In case you didn’t know, it was reported earlier this week that Eggers is directing a new take on “Romeo & Juliet” for Focus Features, and that it will be his next film after “Werwulf.” Yes, the man obsessed with the most diseased tales imaginable is tackling the famous love story next.

At a post-trailer Q&A for “Werwulf,” which opens Christmas Day, Eggers explained why his next movie is Shakespeare’s teen tragedy rather than another gloomy medieval tale.

I was doing something else. But what happened was, after “Werwulf,” I was writing another horror movie, and it got so dark again, and I was like, 'I need a break. So, I'll do something about two teenagers killing themselves.'

That’s a great line, and it tells you everything about where his head is at. For most filmmakers, a double suicide is the darkest material imaginable. For Eggers, it’s a vacation.

There are no details yet on casting, setting or approach, and that’s the real question. Is this a period-accurate “Romeo & Juliet”? Knowing Eggers’s obsession with historical authenticity, I’d bet on it.

For now, Eggers has “Werwulf,” which he’s described as “the darkest thing I’ve ever written,” a bold claim given the pitch-black bleakness of his past work. In “The Witch,” three children get murdered, including a baby. In “The Lighthouse,” insanity creeps in through mermaids, corpse-eating crows and masturbating sailors. In “The Northman,” Viking raiders lock villagers in a barn and burn them alive. In “Nosferatu,” a demonic sexual predator lusts after a young woman.

So, yes, after a murdered baby, Count Orlok’s plague rats and a barn full of burning villagers, a story that ends with two teenagers dead in a tomb should count as “lighter” fare. Only Eggers could make “Romeo & Juliet” feel like a breather. It’ll probably still be the grimmest version ever put on screen.