Leonardo DiCaprio is very picky about his projects, so any time he’s in line to star in a film, Hollywood sits up and listens. This latest one seems like a good fit. The Oscar-winning actor is set to star in Oscar-winning director Guillermo Del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley.
The film is a new adaptation of William Lindsey Gresham‘s 1946 novel. The novel was first adapted in 1947 as a standard noir charting the rise and fall of a con man, set against the backdrop of a second rate carnival. Sources are indicating that Del Toro’s film will not be a remake of that movie, but a new adaptation of the novel.
Del Toro has co-written the script alongside Kim Morgan, and Fox Searchlight will distribute the film.
The plan is reportedly to begin shooting Nightmare Alley in the autumn, while Del Toro will figure out the rest of his ensemble cast in the meantime. Since The Shape Of Water, he’s been producing projects like Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and Hostiles. This will be his first directorial project since his Oscar win.
DiCaprio’s last role was also his Oscar-winning turn in The Revenant. He’s set to star in Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood later this year, playing a western star struggling to stay relevant in 1969 Hollywood. THR reports that he was mulling over several scripts for his next project. They included new films by Paul Thomas Anderson and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Although a DiCaprio and PTA pairing sounds incredible, and hopefully that happens somewhere down the line, DiCaprio and Del Toro sounds just as exciting. Del Toro has done a lot of genre work recently, while DiCaprio was searching for that Oscar. So seeing them team up on a noir-ish project like Nightmare Alley should be a fascinating, fresh step in both of their recent careers.
#Peace.Love.NightmareAlley
