‘Nightmare Alley’s Bradley Cooper, Guillermo Del Toro & J Miles Dale On Leaning Into B&W Version That Is Packing Specialty Houses & Broadening Its Run

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE, SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED: The difference in stumping for awards in years past, compared to now — when a Covid encore with the catchy Omicron variant sent everyone back to their homes — is evident when Nightmare Alley star Bradley Cooper, director Guillermo del Toro and producer J.

Miles Dale materialize on a Zoom call. It becomes clear they haven’t seen each other in person for awhile. “There he is, El Capitan,” Cooper says to del Toro; Dale tells Cooper they have to talk about Alvin Williams, the former Toronto Raptors player turned TV commentator who was Cooper’s high school friend back in Philadelphia. “I’m driving in, listening to the local sports radio here and [Williams] is talking about this guy Brad, his high school buddy who helped him study, and then it dawns on me he’s talking about you, and I’m like, dang.” Says del Toro: “Did they say anything about me?” And Cooper: “Or Nightmare Alley?” Dale says, “No, they cut him off after 20 minutes, when he was about to get into it.

They fu*ked us,” Dale joked.Just another example of how difficult it has been for their stylish adult noir remake to get a foothold in the marketplace (it grossed $9.3M WW up against the only Omicron blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home) at a time when the adult demo wanted no part of leaving home to sit in a movie theater.

Still, Fox Searchlight allowed the director to make a B&W version called Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light. Now, they are using that B&W version to get more cinephiles and the industry crowd to see the film adapted from the William Lindsay Gresham novel previously turned into the 1947 Tyron Power film about a carnival grifter who gets his comeuppance.