Robert Eggers hires dialect coach so Werwulf’s Middle English doesn’t baffle modern ears

Robert Eggers is doing the most Robert Eggers thing possible with his next movie, Werwulf: he wrote the dialogue in straight-up Middle English. Yes, like 13th-century Middle English. And because that can sound like another planet to modern ears, he brought in a dialect coach to sand down the pronunciation just enough so we can actually follow it.

A language experiment, but grounded in history

Eggers has basically made period detail his religion at this point, and Werwulf sounds like him pushing that to the edge, right down to how every line is spoken. He built the script with Icelandic writer Sjon, the same collaborator from The Northman, and their plan was to lean all the way into the medieval vibe instead of just faking the flavor.

"We worked with two Oxford professors on the dialogue, which is in Middle English, and then worked extensively with a dialect coach on a way to temper the pronunciation in a way that would be understandable to modern audiences."

Eggers has been training for this

• The Lighthouse: that briny, period-accurate sailor talk that made you feel like you could taste the seawater
• The Northman: a heightened, mythic register that matched the saga energy
• Nosferatu: laser-precise gothic texture, from tone to cadence, to make the old-world dread feel authentic

So, yes, Middle English in a major movie is a bold swing. But coming from Eggers, it tracks. He is not just setting stories in the past; he wants them to sound like they actually crawled out of it. For Werwulf, that meant teaming with two Oxford scholars to nail the language and a patient dialect coach to make sure audiences are challenged, not lost.