The next movie being directed by Guillermo del Toro will be Nightmare Alley, an adaptation of the novel by William Lindsay Gresham. Published in 1946, the novel spawned its first feature film just one year later starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, and this new take on the material for Fox Searchlight is being written by del Toro and Kim Morgan.
Speaking with Collider this week, del Toro teased his next movie, which currently has Bradley Cooper attached to star with Cate Blanchett now in talks to join the cast.
“Well what it is is that book was given to me in 1992 by Ron Perlman before I saw the Tyrone Power movie, and I loved the book. My adaptation that I’ve done with [co-writer] Kim Morgan is not necessarily—the entire book is impossible, it’s a saga,” del Toro explained. “But there are elements that are darker in the book, and it’s the first chance I have—in my short films I wanted to do noir. It was horror and noir. And now is the first chance I have to do a real underbelly of society type of movie. [There are] no supernatural elements. Just a straight, really dark story.”
Del Toro assured the site that his adaptation will most definitely be a rated “R” affair.
The original novel is described as “a study of the lowest depths of showbiz and its sleazy inhabitants – the dark, shadowy world of a second rate carnival filled with hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales.” The 1947 movie chronicles “The rise and fall of Stanton Carlisle, a mentalist whose lies and deceit prove to be his downfall.”