A new trailer for director Guillermo del Toro’s followup to his Oscar-winning “The Shape of Water” has arrived.
A noir-tinged thriller, “Nightmare Alley” stars Bradley Cooper as carnival con-man Stanton Carlisle who quickly endears himself to travelling sideshow clairvoyant Zeena (Toni Collette) and her husband Pete (David Strathairn), a washed-up mentalist. Seeing the chance for a new grift, Stanton sees a way to con a dangerous tycoon (Richard Jenkins) with the help of the mysterious psychiatrist Dr. Lillith Ritter (Cate Blanchett).
The cast also boasts more stars, including Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, Ron Perlman, Clifton Collins Jr., Mary Steenburgen, and Tim Blake Nelson.
READ MORE: Guillermo del Toro Says He’s Spent The Equivalent Of 16 Years Working On ‘Unrealized Projects’
Del Toro has stated that his “Nightmare Alley” is directly based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham and not the popular 1947 movie version starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell. It was Perlman — del Toro’s Hellboy — who reportedly gifted him a copy of the book back in 1992 before he saw the Tyrone Power film, according to Collider.
“My adaptation that I’ve done with 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.”
Filmed in and around Hamilton, Ont., and Toronto, “Nightmare Alley” will arrive in cinemas on December 18.
Watch the previously released trailer below.
