News Guillermo del Toro to Direct Nightmare Alley

[PsychoPere]

New first broke a month ago that Guillermo del Toro was looking to film Nightmare Alley as his next film, with Leonardo di Caprio set to star.

Leonardo DiCaprio is in negotiations to star in Fox Searchlight’s “Nightmare Alley,” Guillermo del Toro’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning film “The Shape of Water.”

Del Toro will direct the pic and co-wrote the script with Kim Morgan. “Nightmare Alley” is being produced and financed by del Toro and J. Miles Dale with TSG Entertainment, with Fox Searchlight acquiring worldwide distribution rights to the film.

While there is a 1947 Fox pic, this film will be more based on the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. The 1947 movie starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist who is even more corrupt than he is. At first, they enjoy success fleecing people with their mentalist act, but then she turns the tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.

Additional details have now come out related specifically to the film's production schedule: September 30th through January 28th, to be filmed in Toronto.

I'm not familiar with either the original book nor the first film adaptation mentioned in the Variety article. That said - del Toro, noir thriller, plus di Caprio?

Sign me the hell up, please and now.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

That does sound intriguing. I'm definitely curious to see how del Toro will direct a non-monster/creature movie. A noir thriller oddly seems like the logical step for him.

 

[Greg Cox]

Very excited by this. The original movie is great, but the Hays Office forced the filmmakers to clean things up a lot and tack on a forced happy ending. The original novel by William Gresham is shockingly bleak and raw even by modern standards.

For those that don't know, the story is about the rise and fall of a carnival huckster with a phony mind-reading act. So a sideshow noir, basically.

Should be right up del Toro's alley.

(FYI: the original movie, starring Tyrone Power, shows up on TCM periodically. Watched it again just a few week ago.)