Days after the first official photos of Searchlight Pictures’ Nightmare Alley the studio has debuted the first official trailer for Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro’s next feature film. Based on the 1946 novel, Nightmare Alley marks del Toro’s first film as a director since the Best Picture-winning The Shape of Water back in 2017. Featuring a stacked cast that is filled to the brim with Academy Award winners and nominees, Nightmare Alley stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, David Strathairn, and frequent del Toro collaborator Ron Perlman. Look out Academy, Guillermo is coming for Oscar gold again. Check out the trailer below!
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The very brief synopsis of the film from Searchlight reads: “In Nightmare Alley, an ambitious young carny (Bradley Cooper) with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett) who is even more dangerous than he is.” William Lindsay Gresham’s novel was previously adapted into a feature film, del Toro collaborated on the screenplay for this film with co-writer Kim Morgan.
“I’m inspired and elated to be joined by this brilliant cast,” del Toro previously said when production began. “Kim Morgan and I have worked with great passion to bring the dark, raw world and language of William Gresham to the screen and now we are joined by a superb group of artists and technicians to bring it to life.”
Despite what the name might have you believe isn’t another horror tale from del Toro. Speaking in an interview earlier this week about the project, the Oscar winning director said Nightmare Alley is his take on the noir genre.
“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 told Vanity Fair: “Curiously enough, in approaching Nightmare Alley, I said I’m not going to do any of the clichés associated with the 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.”
Del Toro will reunite with many of his previously collaborators for the film including 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.
