While details are scarce, sources say the story is set in 13th century England. The script also features dialogue that was true to the time period and has translations and annotations for those uninitiated in Old English.
Sounds very promising, I love it when directors do this instead of dumbing down a script for wider appeal. I watched The Witch recently and the dialogue really added to the immersion, which in turn leads to a scarier film.
- Yeah what I love about the witch is that it captures more than just the horror of like, you know, a witch, but also the hopeless 17th century Puritan nightmare of being excommunicated, ostracized and left to fend for yourselves in the woods in an unfamiliar country.
  
  Spoilers for those who haven't seen it:
  
  I am not a big fan of the horror genre but I absolutely love what directors like Eggers and Flanagan are doing with it. Sort of making films and series about other things, that just happen to have a horror twist to them.
- Idk, at a point it becomes its own weird marketing gimmick. Like, you can make a movie with period accurate 17th century English dialog, because, despite antiquated turns of phrase and whatnot, it is by and large the same language we speak today. Middle English (which is the more appropriate terminology for the vernacular in post-Norman Conquest Britain, not Old English), by contrast, requires significantly more effort to decipher, and I think it is unrealistic to expect any audience put up with a whole movie written in that way, and this is to say nothing of how period accurate pronounciation would further obscure the meaning of words which would otherwise be recognizable in writing.
  To illustrate my point: 1600s English
  To be or not to be, that is the question;
  Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
  The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
  Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
  And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-
  1300s English
  When that Aprill with his shoures soote
  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
  And bathed every veyne in swich licour
  Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
  Can you piece together what Chaucer is saying there based on context clues and a decent vocabulary? Sure, it's not impossible, but, again, I believe a modern production written in that way becomes more about the filmmakers choice to use that language to tell the story than it is about the story itself. It's worth pointing out too that the language used in The Canterbury Tales is 100-200 years more modern than the time period of this film. Period accurate dialog would sound even further removed from modern English.
  Now, with that being said, Eggers clearly has a talent for writing evocative period styled dialog so I'm happy to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I am a little wary of the marketing machine already spinning up here.
  
  I'm confused by your argument. It's a marketing gimmick...that won't work because modern audiences don't tolerate period authentic dialogue? That doesn't sound like a marketing gimmick.
  
  What I mean is that period accurate dialog, or at least a respectable pastiche of such, has become a part of Eggers' brand. It's expected of his work, and is a bullet point used to drum up interest in his projects, as indicated by the fact that they included it as a feature of note in its announcement to the public (and potential investors, depending on how early in development the project is).
  My argument is that, in this particular case, I feel like writing "period accurate" dialog will make an inferior film to one which approximated it without slavish devotion to authenticity at all costs.
  My rationale for that position is that it's not very immersive to require annotations which explain key things in modern parlance. I understand folks that saw the Witch and came away from that thinking that the antiquated dialog helped immerse them in that film. I felt the same way. Ditto for the Lighthouse. I would not have felt that way if more than half the dialog sounded Shakespeare ran through a couple rounds of Google Translate, and then spoken through a mouthful of oatmeal. On top of which, every now and again the movie stopped to read Wikipedia at me about colonial life in Puritan New England. I like to do that on my own, after the movie, for embarrassing lengths of time, thank you very much.
  As for the contradiction on using period accurate dialog to drum up interest despite its potential to actually shut the audience out, well, clearly Hollywood does not share my qualms, so I don't think it's a contradiction at all. Not all marketing is good marketing. Sometimes, people will try to sell you something using features that you actively dislike, and, when you indicate your rejection, their response is to double down on what was prepared because you are clearly wrong about what you want.
  All of that being said, I want emphasize that Eggers has earned the benefit of the doubt, and its ridiculous to write off a project based on the few scraps of information they had ready to share at the time of its announcement. I'll be very curious to see how he approaches the problem, I'm just saying I very much consider "the film will be written in Middle English" to be a problem to be solved, not an automatic gateway to immersion.
  
  I guess if you are arguing that it's targeted marketing to a specific audience, then I can see your point. But that's not the impression I got when you mentioned "any audience" in your previous reply. Regardless, I believe this is an artistic choice he makes and insists upon as opposed to a gimmick pushed by studios to hype up his films. His most recent film did not include this supposed gimmick, so I'm not sure how that applies to your "doubling down" theory.
  
  The core of my argument is that I think, on its face, the idea of using period accurate Middle English in your werewolf movie is a bad idea that will likely result in an inscrutable film, and if Eggers insists upon it, he is letting his "brand" interfere with his creative judgment. I did not mean to imply I ever thought it was the studio's idea that he emulate period language. It's clearly a passion of his, and he's deployed it to good effect in other movies, but I don't believe it's going to be right in this particular case, the same way it wasn't right for The Northmen or Nosferatu.
  I am not against the use of period language as a rule. I have stated why I believe its use in this film will have a different effect than it had in the Witch, and provided illustrative examples. You may disagree with me on that front, and that's okay, but I feel like I laid out my argument decently on this subject, and thats the root of this whole thing.
  Marketers doubling down on selling points which their audience have rejected was an oblique reference to American politics that I couldn't stop myself from including. It was low hanging fruit, and I almost regret it. However, I will defend myself by saying your argument was, essentially, "it's a contradiction for something to be both bad and one of the primary selling points", and that's readily disproven.
  ETA: and, again, I can't emphasize enough that I'm willing to wait and see what he does with it. It's a bad idea, in my estimation, in the sense that there are a million ways it can not work, and very few ways in which it does. However, Eggers is, as mentioned, a talented guy who clearly thinks he's got a way to pull it off. I'll be happy to eat an extra helping of humble pie if he succeeds and does not have to compromise on this point.
  
  Okay, that first paragraph makes a bit more sense to me if I combine it with your first reply. Your primary critique here is of Eggers and his creative process and the potential effects on the quality of the film, rather than marketing and financial results. I think when you added that stuff it sent me off in the wrong direction, because it sounded like you were arguing that the language choice was a corporate decision and that it was a bad one because the average person is not capable of following medieval dialogue and therefore won't be interested in seeing the film. I guess I enjoy the fact that Eggers is doing something different to his contemporaries and that overrides any concern I might have about creative quirks feeling forced. And selfishly, I feel pretty confident in my ability to follow older dialogue or subtitles so it doesn't concern me if that confuses other viewers. You can't please everyone and compromising on your creative choices in an effort to do so can be just as destructive to the final product.
  
  Yes, I probably didn't emphasize enough exactly what I was referring to by "marketing" initially, and it's confusing when talking about an industry in which that term usually refers to the studio advertising strategy. I still don't know what else you would call it, necessarily, but I can see where my phrasing was misleading. My bad.
  I appreciate your optimism and willingness to let Eggers do Eggers, and what's incomprehensible to some person is going to be fine for another. I just think your optimism (and Eggers') crosses into delusion if you think you're going to be able to follow dialog like this, subtitled or not. The point I'm arguing, that I don't think you've responded to other than to say you're not concerned, is that we aren't talking about writing a movie in "Ye Olde English", we are talking about writing movie in a fundamentally different language than what is spoken today, and then, presumably, not subtitling the dialog (I would imagine that would be mentioned in the press release if that was the plan at this point).
  I understand that my argument relies upon an assumption that the film Eggers' is planning is mostly conventional, just written in Middle English. I stand by my assertion that that is a bad idea, even if it comes from a place of artistic purity. I don't share your view that a creative idea which breaks the norms of storytelling is good based solely on its being different. It can make a film interesting, to be sure, but it doesn't make it good. By way of example: The Last Jedi is a very interesting movie to me, in the sense that I'm flabbergasted Disney let Rian Johnson come into their multi-billion dollar franchise with the attitude of "this is all dumb and if you take it seriously, fuck you". That level of anarchic glee in a Star Wars movie of all things is fascinating. I still think it's a bad movie in the sense that it's a slog to watch. I believe Johnson was so preoccupied with deconstructing the mythos that he sacrificed telling a good story in service of that idea. Much as I was arguing that Eggers would be sacrificing good storytelling sense in service of period authenticity.
  However, to tie a bow on this whole thing, since I've taken up a lot of your time and I appreciate you patiently hearing me out, I acknowledge that my assumption does not give Eggers the benefit of the doubt. If he commits to the bit, I'm sure he will try to find other means of conveying information to the audience than spoken dialog. Its a visual medium, after all, and Eggers is a talented filmmaker. Until we know more about his execution of this idea it's all much ado about nothing, I just have trepidations.
  
  I've watched Simon Roper's YouTube channel for many years, so the idea of cinema in a language I don't fully understand isn't as intimidating to me as maybe it is to others. It's an interesting challenge that I'd definitely be up for, as I have an underlying interest in linguistics and old languages. The great thing about working in the horror genre is that you generally don't need to rely on a scipt to tell your audience. It's a genre that relies heavily on visual storytelling.

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