Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley switches composers

If you’re a fan of film scores, the following should come as a bit of a shock – Guillermo del Toro is parting ways with composer Alexandre Desplat on Nightmare Alley, with Variety revealing the latter is backing out due to scheduling issues. He’s being replaced by regular Rian Johnson composer (and cousin) Nathan Johnson, who previously scored Knives Out, Looper and more. 

This is surprising as del Toro and Desplat seemed to be a pretty solid combo after The Shape of Water, but given that COVID-19 disrupted so many schedules, it’s pretty understandable. The two are still set to re-team on del Toro’s Netflix adaptation of Pinocchio, so clearly, this was a scheduling issue and nothing more.

Johnson sounds like a perfectly suitable replacement, with some of his scores for Rian Johnson being pretty outstanding in their own right. My favorite of his is definitely Brick, and I’m sure del Toro will encourage him to experiment. 

Nightmare Alley stars Bradley Cooper as an ambitious carny in the post-WW2 era, who passes himself off as a mentalist in cahoots with an unscrupulous psychiatrist. It has an all-star cast, with Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman and David Strathairn co-starring.

The movie is based on the book by William Lindsay Gresham, which in turn was made into a classic 1947 film noir starring Tyrone Power. Having seen the film, I can tell you that if del Toro sticks to the original ending, you’re going to see Cooper as you’ve never seen him before – that’s for sure. Nightmare Alley is one of those classic Hollywood hidden gems that are ripe for rediscovery, and Criterion re-issued it on Blu-ray (buy it here). It’s well worth picking up if you want to watch a genuinely unsettling psychological thriller. The film was considered so shocking to fans of matinee idol Tyrone Power that the studio withdrew the film from circulation for decades.

Nightmare Alley is co-written with film noir historian Kim Morgan, so if any upcoming movie has some legit noir cred, this is it. I can’t wait until its December 17th release.