‘Werwulf’ Trailer 2: Robert Eggers Still Won’t Show The Werewolf

Focus Features dropped the second trailer for Robert Eggers’ Werwulf on September 26, and the date was not random. That is the Harvest Moon.

Every beat of this campaign has landed on a full moon. The first trailer arrived June 29. The poster followed July 29. The first merchandise dropped August 28.

Werwulf hits theaters December 25.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson Howls, Willem Dafoe Hunts

The June trailer was mostly mood. Fog, candlelight, wet wool. This one gives the story a shape.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays a 13th century English farmer credited only as Man. Lily-Rose Depp plays his wife and the mother of his children.

The countryside around them is being eaten by plague.

Willem Dafoe turns up as one of three wolf hunters, alongside Ralph Ineson and Jack Morris, riding in because the locals have decided the wolves are the problem.

Taylor-Johnson howls at the moon. He writhes on the ground. Then he backs into the dark, and whatever happens next happens where the camera cannot follow.

Eggers told press at a Focus event this week that the shot is not the big one. The real transformation scene is still being held back.

Taylor-Johnson did the body work himself, with one exception that could not be pulled off practically.

Eggers Is Keeping The Creature In The Dark

Two trailers in, nobody has seen the werewolf.

There is a howl. There is a shadow. There are a lot of terrified faces. That is the entire look at the monster so far.

Eggers laid out the thinking to Empire. He said werewolf movies usually fall apart at the creature itself, which either reads as a man in a suit or reads as a computer effect.

His model is the original Alien, where the monster stays “a mystery and in the shadows.”

He had a reason for the setting, too. Eggers told Esquire the movie takes place around 1300 because that is the latest it could. England spent the 13th century wiping out its wolves to protect the wool trade, and once the wolves were gone, the werewolf stories went with them.

“Does This Take Place In Hell?”

Eggers has been calling Werwulf the darkest thing he has ever written since he first brought the project up in early 2025. He has not backed off it.

Speaking at a press event on the Universal lot, he said he set out to write the scariest thing he could after Nosferatu.

“I don’t know that I did that, but I definitely wrote the darkest thing,” Eggers said.

He traced it back to the real historical werewolf cases he started reading about in high school. What those men did was so far outside anything people could process that the culture around them decided they could not be human.

Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke finished the script and texted Eggers one question: “Does this take place in hell?”

Eggers said it needed to be hell for Taylor-Johnson.

A Full Moon Game Runs Through November

Focus launched a game alongside the trailer at DevourethAllMankynde.com, named after the tagline on the July poster.

It runs on three full moons. The Harvest Moon is the first. The Hunter’s Moon on October 26 and the Beaver Moon on November 24 are the other two.

On each one, a hidden sign appears somewhere across the movie’s digital platforms. Players get 24 hours to find it, decipher it and enter the answer on the site before it vanishes.

Clear all three and Focus is promising a prize. The studio has not said what it is.

The first clue went up on the movie’s X account, @werwulfmovie.

Christmas Day, Just Like Nosferatu

Focus is running the same play it ran two years ago.

Nosferatu opened on Christmas Day 2024 and became Eggers’ biggest movie, finishing around $181 million worldwide.

Werwulf gets the same December 25 slot. Focus has its next Eggers movie lined up as well, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

Eggers co-wrote Werwulf with Sjón, his The Northman collaborator. Taylor-Johnson, Depp, Dafoe and Ineson were all in Nosferatu.

About Werwulf

Here is the official description from Focus Features.

Witness Robert Eggers’ most visceral and haunting experience yet. Focus Features presents WERWULF, a harrowing tale of devotion, damnation and the devil within.

Release Date: December 25, 2026
Directed By: Robert Eggers
Written By: Robert Eggers, Sjón
Produced By: Robert Eggers p.g.a., Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Garrett Bird p.g.a., Sjón
Executive Producers: Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus, Bernard Bellew
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Lily-Rose Depp