Lies, treachery and deceit highlight the first teaser for Guillermo del Toro’s star-studded carny saga ‘Nightmare Alley’

“Is he man or beast?”

Searchlight Pictures has released the first teaser for Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro’s long-anticipated Nightmare Alley, where an ambitious carny (8-time Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper) with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist (two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett) who is even more dangerous than he is.

The film also stars Academy Award nominees Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, David Strathairn and Richard Jenkins, with Ron Perlman, Clifton Collins, Jr., Holt McCallany, Jim Beaver, Tim Blake Nelson and Academy Award winner Mary Steenburgen.

Principal photography was initially set to begin in September 2019, but was delayed to accommodate Cooper’s schedule and ultimately began in January 2020. In March 2020, Del Toro himself shut down production on the film after rising concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic after approximately 45% of the film had been finished. Production resumed in September 2020 in Toronto. By November 2020, principal photography was completed and re-shoots were underway. Production on the film officially wrapped in December 2020.

Kim Morgan and del Toro adapted the script based on the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham and features a crew that includes two-time Academy Award-winning composer Alexandre Desplat, Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Dan Laustsen, production designer Tamara Deverell, costumes by Academy Award nominee Luis Sequeira and film editing by Cam McLauchlin.

Searchlight Pictures will release Nightmare Alley only in theaters on December 17.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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