The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States by A24 on October 18, 2019. It was shot in black-and-white, with a nearly-square 1.19:1 aspect ratio. Principal photography took place in Nova Scotia, Canada, beginning in April 2018 and lasting slightly over a month.
The Lighthouse draws visually from photography of 1890s New England, maritime-themed French cinema from the 1930s, and symbolist art. Robert Eggers assisted the development when Max was unable to complete the adaptation of 'The Light-House', sourcing the plot from a nineteenth-century legend of an accident at a lighthouse in Wales. The idea for the film first emerged from Max Eggers' re-envisioning of Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished short story of the same name. The film has defied categorization in media, and interpretations of it range from a horror film, a psychological thriller, a survival film, and a character study, among others. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers in turmoil after being marooned at a remote New England outpost by a wild storm.
The Lighthouse is a 2019 film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, from a screenplay he wrote with his brother Max Eggers.
