Jordan Peele And Robert Eggers Are Making Christmas 2024 Horror Auteur Barbenheimer

This week, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu got a release date. The next film from the director of arthouse horror hit The Witch will now release on Christmas Day 2024. That just so happens to be the day that the untitled next film from Jordan Peele, director of mainstream horror hit Get Out, will invade cineplexes. Universal, which will distribute both, may be trying to set itself up for a Barbenheimer event with two of its own films. It might just work.

For the health of film as an industry and artform, I really hope it does. It’s difficult to get original movies made, and even more difficult to get them a wide theatrical distribution. In the age of IP, the films that take up marquee space at multiplexes tend to have some basis in an existing brand. Though Oppenheimer became a mega-success this year, the rest of the movies that dominated the box office in 2023 were sequels, or based on properties with a built-in fanbase like a toy or a video game. Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, John Wick: Chapter 4, and Five Nights at Freddy’s weren’t made on the strength of the story they wanted to tell or the talent that wanted to tell it. At least, not primarily. They were made because they were safe bets based on prior success.

That IP-driven landscape does seem to be shifting somewhat. I mentioned the successes above, but there were many more IP movies that underperformed or outright failed this year. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Little Mermaid, Fast X, The Flash, The Marvels, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, and my beloved Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, all failed to light the world on fire, and in some cases, torched a whole lot of corporate cash instead. Steven Spielberg predicted a decade ago that we would hit a point when several mega-budget movies would belly flop at the box office, prompting a paradigm shift in the industry. 2023 was the year that prediction came to pass.

The system may be set for a radical rework, the kind the film industry got in the late ’60s and ’70s, as expensive studio-driven productions like Doctor Dolittle faltered and director-driven films like Jaws chomped their way to blockbuster success. But while the current hierarchy survives, there are only a handful of directors who can get the original projects they want greenlit, and an even smaller number that are millennials or younger. Two who have emerged in the last decade are Peele and Eggers.

Peele and Eggers (alongside Hereditary helmer Ari Aster, who is often mentioned in the same breath) established their auteur status by directing idiosyncratic horror films, the one genre where original work still regularly gets made, and with small enough budgets that it’s usually a safe bet. Peele has enjoyed huge mainstream success, with Get Out achieving cultural phenomenon status, raking in $255.4 million on a budget of $4.5 million, and earning him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Eggers has more limited appeal, but his period pieces, which adopt the language and outlook of the times they portray, have done better than anyone could possibly expect. His most recent film, The Northman, wasn’t a box office success, but did become profitable on VOD.

Given the kinds of films the two directors are interested in making, the pair releasing movies on the same day is an exciting idea. It’s the first double feature since Barbenheimer that actually seems like it could fuel both films to greater success. Peele makes the more mainstream movies of the two, but Eggers’ previous features have all found their audiences, too. Given how popular horror continues to be with younger audiences, it seems probable that teenage and twentysomething horror-heads would treat new movies from popular filmmakers as a major event. This all depends on both films being good, which is an often overlooked aspect of Barbenheimer’s success. But Peele and Eggers are skilled filmmakers. I bet they rise to the challenge.

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