Leonardo DiCaprio is in negotiations to star in “Nightmare Alley,” director Guillermo Del Toro’s follow-up to the Best Picture-winning film “The Shape of Water,” an individual with knowledge of the project told TheWrap.
Fox Searchlight has acquired the worldwide rights to release the film, which is being produced and financed by Del Toro and J. Miles Dale with TSG Entertainment.
Del Toro is directing the film based on his own screenplay he co-wrote with Kim Morgan. “Nightmare Alley” is based on the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, which was made into a 1947 Fox movie that starred Tyrone Powell and Joan Blondell about a deceitful, mentalist and con-man whose lies prove to be his downfall after he starts a relationship with an even more corrupt female psychiatrist.
The plan is for “Nightmare Alley” to shoot this fall as del Toro continues to cast.
DiCaprio will next be seen in Quentin Tarantino’s ’60s, Manson-era film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” opposite Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt opening this summer. He’s repped by LBI Entertainment.
Del Toro is a two-time Oscar winner as a director and producer for 2017’s “The Shape of Water,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture. He’s currently serving as a producer on this year’s “Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark” and he’s also developing his own take on “Pinocchio.”
Variety first reported the news of DiCaprio’s casting.