Days after Searchlight added black-and-white theatrical dates for Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” (along with some holdover color ones), his remake of the 1947 film noir classic debuted Tuesday on both Disney-owned Hulu and Warner Bros.’ HBO Max.Both streamers carry only the color version, perhaps because the monochrome cut just arrived in theaters.
As for why Disney would make the counterintuitive move to share the film with a rival, that’s the fallout from the Disney acquisition of 20th Century Fox (which includes Searchlight).
Studios usually contract with premium cable channels on theatrical releases; pre-Covid, these deals usually kicked in eight to nine months after they opened in theaters.Fox, including Searchlight, had such an agreement with HBO.
(Warner Bros.
has a premium cable channel; Fox did not.) That deal extends through this year and includes a number of key titles produced by Fox.
As a result, they were
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