Guillermo del Toro has revealed how he was in the middle of filming a scene when production was shut down on his upcoming star-studded psychological thriller, Nightmare Alley.
In early March, Disney announced that it was suspending production on the Oscar-winning director's new movie, which stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Ron Perlman and Rooney Mara, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The 55-year-old filmmaker explained how he got 45 percent of the film shot before production was halted, and revealed how the cast and crew were "literally in the middle of a great scene" when he made the decision to send everyone home.
"We stopped the shoot a week before [the industry shut down]. We reacted super fast, we proposed the studio to stop as opposed to being asked to stop," del Toro told IndieWire.
"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.'"
del Toro also shared his hopes about getting production back up and running in the autumn, adding: "Fingers crossed. You never know."
Nightmare Alley is del Toro's follow-up to his critically acclaimed The Shape of Water, which won Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Director.
