Searchlight Pictures have released the full trailer for Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro’s new movie, the upcoming Nightmare Alley. His follow-up to the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley features an incredible ensemble cast including Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, David Strathairn, and frequent del Toro collaborator Ron Perlman. Based on the 1946 novel, Nightmare Alley might look like another horror-tinged picture from the mind of del Toro but the filmmaker has previously noted he considers this his take on the film-noir subgenre. Check out the full trailer below and look for the film to arrive on December 17 of this year, just in time for Oscar season.
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“This has no supernatural element. It’s based completely in a reality world. There is nothing fantastic. It’s a very different movie from my usual, but yes, the title and my name would create that [impression],” del Toro previously Vanity Fair about how the new movie invokes feelings of a horror film. “Curiously enough, in approaching Nightmare Alley, I said I’m not going to do any of the clichés associated with the (noir) genre. I’m not going to do an artifact. I’m not going to do the Venetian blinds, and voiceover, and detectives walking with fedoras in wet streets. I wanted to do the universe of the novel, which is a little gritty, but also strangely magical. It has a very strange, mystical allure- and mythical. I was very attracted to that possibility.”
The official description for Nightmare Alley reads: ” When charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena (Toni Collette) and her has-been mentalist husband Pete (David Strathairn) at a traveling carnival, he crafts a golden ticket to success, using this newly acquired knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of 1940s New York society. With the virtuous Molly (Rooney Mara) loyally by his side, Stanton plots to con a dangerous tycoon (Richard Jenkins) with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett) who might be his most formidable opponent yet.”
Four years after finally winning Oscar gold, del Toro seems to be gunning for it once again. As if his cast, which includes two former Oscar winners and six former nominees, his behind-the-camera crew reunites him with much of his former collaborators, many of whom were also nominated at the Academy Awards. Among them are costume designer Luis Sequeira (The Shape of Water, Mama), Director of Photography Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak), and Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Berardi (The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak). Tamara Deverell of The Strain will reunite with del Toro as the film’s Production Designer with Editor Cam Mclauchlin (The Shape of Water, Pacific Rim) cutting the film.
