Guillermo del Toro shot less than half of Nightmare Alley before shutdown

July 1st 2020, 5:30pm

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

After all the classic films director Guillermo del Toro has made in his career – from PAN'S LABRYNTH, to SHAPE OF WATER, to the badass sequel BLADE II – I'm always excited about whatever project GDT has up his sleeve next, and I was definitely looking forward to his upcoming horror film NIGHTMARE ALLEY, which was about

A corrupt con-man teams up with a female psychiatrist to trick people into giving them money.

Unforunately, he had to cancel the shoot because of the Covid epidemic, and was less than halfway done shooting. Here's what he had to say about the matter in an interview with IndieWire:

We reacted super fast, we proposed the studio to stop as opposed to being asked to stop…That saved us. Nobody to my knowledge in the cast or the crew got coronavirus. We were roughly 45 percent in. We were literally in the middle of a great scene. We went to lunch and talked to the studio and when we came back we said, ‘Everybody leave your tools and leave now.

Always looking on the bright side, though, del Toro said the break in shooting has allowed him to focus more on his long-gestating stop-motion PINOCCHIO flick:

In stop-motion, you have many sets nearby one another in a warehouse like space…You can have 10 sets in one space. We had to create a protocol where we now space the sets a certain number of feet. We created different shifts so no one is exposed. In this moment, security is paramount. Health, safety is the number one concert. We got to get used to it. I don’t think we can go back to what we consider the old normal. Everything will be a little altered.

Obviously no official release dates as of yet, as the situation is still ongoing, but we'll definitely keep you updated!

So what do you guys think? Excited for GDT's NIGHTMARE ALLEY or PINOCCHIO? Either way, sound off below!