Focus Features will unleash Robert Eggers' 'Werwulf' on December 25, and the studio screened first footage for a small group of journalists on the Universal lot in late September — three months before release, an unusually early position for a film that wants a bite of the awards race.

Eggers set out his premise plainly: "There are no silver bullets. No one is getting bitten and turning into a wolf." That is a hard reset of the genre — an origin story set in England around 1300, filmed in Wales and England, performed in Middle English, and built so that viewers do not need the dialogue. "You don't need to understand what anyone's saying to understand the movie, because you're with everyone on an emotional level," he said.

What does the timing change for the race?

The film arrives on Christmas Day, months after competitors begin their campaigns. Other actors will pound the circuit while Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Lily-Rose Depp stay unseen by voters. The source notes, though, that Michael B. Jordan ('Sinners') and Amy Madigan ('Weapons') ran successful campaigns for horror films, so the headwinds are real but not disqualifying. The practical question — what does this change for the actors? — has no answer until voters actually see the film. Caveat noted.

Where the nominations realistically sit

The craft categories carry the strongest case, and there is a track record to measure. Eggers' 2019 'The Lighthouse' earned one Oscar nomination: Best Cinematography for Jarin Blaschke. 2024's 'Nosferatu' raised the count to four — cinematography, production design, costume design, and makeup and hairstyling. At the September event, Eggers staked a claim for the same returning artisans, and current Gold Derby odds list 'Werwulf' as nomination-competitive in all those categories.

The production designer is Craig Lathrop; the costume designer is Linda Muir. Eggers said nothing from the period survives usable: "Even the churches from the period have been modified over the years, so we have to build everything."

The craft argument, in specifics

Eggers offered one detail that captures the method: "You guys don't know that Willem Dafoe's character has the correct amount of buttons for that period on his cuffs, but you might notice that he's the only person in the movie who has buttons — because he's the only person who can afford buttons." Dafoe's character is also the only person in the film who wears jewelry.

Blaschke's read of the script set the visual brief. Eggers said the cinematographer texted him after reading it: "Does this take place in hell?" Eggers defended the mud-and-misery version of the Middle Ages, conceding that "some medievalists might be annoyed" by the stereotype — but insisting the world must be "muddy and rainy and dirty and miserable" for the story to work.

Taylor-Johnson: a lead-actor push, sight unseen

Eggers called the performance from Taylor-Johnson "career-defining." The previewed opening scene shows a naked Taylor-Johnson beginning to shape-shift through violent contortions. Eggers withheld the full transformation sequence: "We wanted to show you something, but we can't give all the goods away."

He explained the casting logic. Taylor-Johnson's dance background lets him execute athletic transformation work that "very few people could do, period," and he carries a "haunted quality" Eggers seeks in actors. The shoot itself — naked, covered in blood, in Welsh and English woods — was, in Eggers' word, "insane."

Depp, in a role Eggers called virtually unrecognizable from her own persona, plays Taylor-Johnson's wife. "This role is not like Lily, certainly physically," Eggers said, describing the character as grounded and earthy against the actor's ethereal presence.

Why 1300, and why England

Eggers dated the story to the era of Edward I, who campaigned to exterminate English wolves to protect the wool trade. Within roughly 200 years, England had no wolves at all — and, as Eggers put it, without wolves you have no werewolf lore. Set the film later and the premise collapses; set it around 1300 and the world turns "primitive and visceral and brutal."

The bottom line

Four nominations for 'Nosferatu' set the benchmark; 'Werwulf' now competes in the same four craft races, with acting bids possible but untested until December 25.