The production is eyeing a shooting start at the top of 2020.
Del Toro will direct the pic and co-wrote the script with Kim Morgan. “Nightmare Alley” is being produced and financed by del Toro and J. Miles Dale with TSG Entertainment, with Fox Searchlight acquiring worldwide distribution rights to the film.
While Fox made a “Nightmare Alley” movie in 1947, this film will be based moreso on the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. The 1947 movie starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who teams 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 tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.
After “The Shape of Water” went on to win several Oscars, including best picture and director for del Toro, the auteur decided to hold off on picking his next directing gig, only focusing his efforts as a producer on the Searchlight movie “Antlers” and the soon-to-be-released “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.”
Blanchett can be seen next in Richard Linklater’s “Where’d You Go Bernadette?” and is currently filming the FX limited series “Mrs. America.” She is repped by CAA and RGM Artists.
Variety