Resurrection of Nosferatu has been a long time coming

How so?

An example is the first vampires from the Balkan and Slavic tradition very often do not drink blood. They would strangle their victims or fornicate with their victims to death. If they drank blood, very often it was from the chest. It was this story of obsession and love. It seemed like, OK, well, visually that looks like a beautiful poetic motif.

But then I also thought about where that folklore comes from. They are people who have sleep paralysis, where they have a waking nightmare of this vampiric visit. They have this pressure on their chest. So it’s also based in a kind of reality, although piercing the sternum with vampire teeth is ridiculous. So it was fun to explore these kinds of things that kept it fresh, but also felt like it could be integrated into this world.

Was most of this film made with practical effects?

I mean there are tons of CG effects in the movie, but they try to do all the big crazy things that are normally done with CG practically. That way, you can use the CG to fix things and extend things, and you’re less aware of the sleight of hand because you’re not looking for what looks fake, because things that are normally fake are real.

I wonder why, working at WIRED, I think about AI a lot. With film, there’s a lot of talk about “AI could do this, AI could do that,” but I watch your films and I don’t think AI could do that. What do you think about these things too?

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that the greatest achievement of AI is to make “semi-convincing screensavers“That’s right. AI, I think, is best used to inspire humans to do more human things. So that’s all I have to say.

I know time is up, but I have to ask: Which monsters are you facing next?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I mean, I’d love to see a Robert Eggers Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.

Maybe I should leave that joke out, because it’s probably going to screw up everywhere.

I mean, you already have SpongeBob has been in a lot of press recently.