Looks like we’ll have to wait a little bit longer to find out more about Guillermo Del Toro’s next flick, “Nightmare Alley,” as the film appears to be skipping the 78th edition of the Venice Film Festival. Based on Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel and its film adaptation by Edmund Goulding the following year, the film stars Bradley Cooper and co-stars Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, and Rooney Mara. The film hit a fairly long delay in mid-production due to the pandemic, so they took several months off to wait out lockdown, returning to shoot the back half once a safe set was possible.
With that in mind, it’s no real surprise that there’s still plenty of work to be done. In an interview with Variety, Alberto Barbera, the Venice Film Festival Chief, was asked why Del Toro’s latest horror flick was absent from the festival lineup. Put simply, it wasn’t ready: “Guillermo wanted to return to Venice after “The Shape of Water” [which won the 2017 Golden Lion] and having been president of the jury the following year. He was literally racing against the clock to finish the film in time. Up until a week ago, he hoped to make it still, though Searchlight had already realized it was impossible because they still have to record some of the music and do other post-production work.”
Barbera also spoke on the several Netflix titles in the lineup and the relative ease (apparently) in drawing American distributors back to the festival. Upfront was a question of the lower number of women directors in the festival lineup – five compared to last year’s eight – acknowledging that “we can, of course, consider this year as a small setback. I think it was probably caused by the fact that the pandemic impacted the production of films directed by females more than those directed by men,” Barbera continued, “but I’m convinced that it’s a momentary lapse because I think the momentum towards greater gender balance is unstoppable.” Guess we’ll see about those changes – and Del Toro’s next film – next year.