'Nghtmare Alley' to be 'double R' rated, says Guillermo

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro says his upcoming directorial "Nightmare Alley" will rate "double R".

The new project, which is del Toro's follow-up to his Oscar-winning film "The Shape of Water", will feature Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in the lead.

The filmmaker will direct the film from a script he has co-written with Kim Morgan. It is based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham.

In an interview with Collider, del Toro shared a few details about the project, saying the film will be a "really dark story" without any "supernatural elements".

"Well, what it is is that the book was given to me in 1992 by Ron Perlman before I saw the Tyrone Power movie, and I loved the book. My adaptation that I’ve done with Kim Morgan is not necessarily -- the entire book is impossible, it's a saga.

"But there are elements that are darker in the book, and it's the first chance I have --in my short films I wanted to do noir. It was horror and noir. And now is the first chance I have to do a real underbelly of society type of movie. (There are) no supernatural elements. Just a straight, really dark story," the director said.

The book is about Stanton Carlisle, an ambitious young con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist who is even more corrupt than he is.

At first, they enjoy success fleecing people with their mentalist act, but then she turns the tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.

When asked about the film's rating, del Toro said, "Big R. Double R."

The director will also produce the project with J Miles Davis. The movie will be distributed by Fox Searchlight.