Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley revealed its first poster on Twitter today via the official Nightmare Alley account. The film, which features Del Toro returning to the director’s chair for the first time since The Shape of Water, will release on December 17, 2021. This will be a theatrical release exclusively.
Nightmare Alley is Not a Horror Movie
Vanity Fair released an interview yesterday with Guillermo del Toro as he teases the plot of Nightmare Alley. In the interview, Toro reflects on audience expectations, noting that people often pigeonhole him as a horror director. Nightmare Alley, he notes, is not a horror movie, but rather his take on the old-school noir genre. This will be a departure from his usual fare, as del Toro is known for including supernatural elements in his films. “It has happened to me in the past with Crimson Peak, where people went in expecting a horror movie,” he stated in the Vanity Fair interview. “I knew it was a gothic romance but it was very difficult to put that across. But yes, this has no supernatural element. It’s based completely in a reality world.”
Bradley Cooper Leads in this Adaptation
Nightmare Alley’s poster featured Bradley Cooper dressed in a suit with a fedora on his head. Behind him are icon images alluding to heaven and hell. The tagline simply reads “Man or Beast.” Also present in the film are acting legends Willem Dafoe, Toni Colette, Cate Blanchett, Ron Perlman, Rooney Mara, and Richard Jenkins.
Nightmare Alley is an adaptation of a novel by the same name, written by William Lindsay Gresham. Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation will be the second film adaptation of the novel. The original version came out in 1947. Originally regarded as a flop, the ’47 version is now seen as one of the great noir films.
Time will tell if the new adaptation lives up to the original. However, given the talent involved, fan expectations are high.
