Bradley Cooper's first look from Guillermo Del Toro's 'Nightmare Alley' released; see

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro is back with another noir thriller film, Nightmare Alley. The movie stars Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in the lead roles. While the film and photos are shot in colour, Nightmare Alley is a homage to the golden age of noir thrillers. The film is based on the 1946 novel of the same name written by William Lindsay Gresham and is the second adaptation after the 1947 version, which is considered a classic example of the genre. 

Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett's first look from Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley

As per Vanity Fair, Bradley Cooper will play the role of Stanton Carlisle, a former carnival worker who becomes a big-city star as a nightclub performer, using cold-reading tricks he picked up in the sideshow to create the impression that he is a powerful mind reader. Now with his tricks, he targets millionaires to pocket big amounts of them. Cate Blanchett plays Dr Lilith Ritter, a psychiatrist who first tries to expose him as a charlatan, then becomes embroiled in his schemes.

Taking about how much the novel influenced the on-screen adaptation, Guillermo Del Toro told Vanity Fair, "From the beginning, our interest was to go for the novel, but it’s almost impossible to adapt because it has a very kaleidoscopic, very peculiar voice. You would need a six-hour miniseries and shifting points of view, and this and that. We started from the novel, and didn’t want to do a remake as much as a new adaptation."  

Explaining further about the movie, Del Torr said, "Curiously enough, in approaching Nightmare Alley, I said I’m not going to do any of the clichés associated with the genre. I’m not going to do an artefact. I’m not going to do the Venetian blinds, and voiceover, and detectives walking with fedoras in wet streets. I wanted to do the universe of the novel, which is a little gritty, but also strangely magical. It has a very strange, mystical allure— and mythical. I was very attracted to that possibility." 

The movie also stars Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Rooney Mara, Holt McCallany, Clifton Collins Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, and David Strathairn. It is scheduled to be released on December 17, 2021. It was originally scheduled for December 3, 2021, but was pushed back to its current date.

Image: Instagram/@searchlightpics