Guillermo del Toro Says NIGHTMARE ALLEY Will Be a Big R-Rated Really Dark Story with No Supernatural Elements
Guillermo del Toro has been hard at work putting together his next film project Nightmare Alley, which has previously been described as a psychological horror thriller.
We also know that the film will be based on the 1946 novel about an “ambitious young con-man who hooks 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 table on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.”
Del Toro is known for playing around with supernatural elements in his films, but in a recent interview with Collider, the filmmaker said that this movie will not have any of that. He describes it as “Just a straight, really dark story.” When asked if he could tease anything about the movie, the filmmaker said:
“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. 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.”
I’m actually looking forward to seeing what Del Toro does with this. I like that he is going to make a dark noir film that explores the monstrous side of humanity without the supernatural monsters. When asked about the rating of the film, the filmmaker said, “Yes, big R. Like, double R!”
Early this week we learned that he was looking to put together a hell of a great cast for the film! He already brought in Bradley Cooper and he will be joined by Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Willem Dafoe, and Mark Povinelli.
Here’s a description of William Lindsay Gresham‘s 1946 novel:
Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him.
And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute bimbo (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.
What are your thoughts on Del Toro’s new film project? Are you excited about it? Do you think he’ll give us a great dark noir thriller?