Guillermo Del Toro made a splash in 2018 with his creature feature The Shape of Watertaking home the Oscar for both Best Picture and Director. It wasn’t Del Toro’s first brush with success — before that, he was known for the beguiling Pan’s Labyrinth and bombastic Pacific Rim. But The Shape of Water, a horror romance story about a woman who falls in love with a mutated fish-man, catapulted Del Toro into a position where he could get long-standing projects developed at last. He wrote and co-produced the chilling Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark last summer, and now he’s back with a 1940s noir drama, Nightmare Alley. 

Nightmare Alley is co-written by Del Toro and Kim Morgan, adapted from the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Grisham. J. Miles Dale, who has collaborated with Del Toro on projects such as The Shape of Water, is producing the film. And, according to a recent Twitter update, the filming process is already underway:

Unlike Del Toro’s previous works, Nightmare Alley will not be centered around the supernatural. Instead, the plot follows a con man (Bradley Cooper) and a carnival mentalist (Toni Collette) who join forces to cheat unsuspecting victims out of their money. Del Toro is no stranger to dark themes, but Nightmare Alley will test the director’s skills in telling a fully human story. The production remains shrouded in mystery for now, but this behind-the-scenes photo is a sure-fire sign that more Nightmare Alley details are on the way.

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