2022 is going to be a big year for one classic character: Pinocchio. Not only is Disney teaming up with Robert Zemeckis for a live-action remake starring Tom Hanks as Geppetto, but Guillermo del Toro is also doing a much darker version of Pinocchio’s story in stop-motion form for Nextlix. The animated musical isn’t expected to come out until later this year, but del Toro recently spoke with Rotten Tomatoes about what folks can expect from the upcoming film.
“They do have parallels. Obviously, ‘Pinocchio’ has big sections at a carnival, so there are straight little echoes between the two [films],” said del Toro. “And ‘Pinocchio’ deals with a different thematic. ‘Pinocchio’ is about what makes a human a human and what makes a human a puppet. Or a puppet a human because it’s set during the rise of Mussolini in Fascist Italy. So, it’s a really interesting thematic exercise, that one,” del Toro shared. You can watch his interview below:
Guillermo del Toro’s new #Pinocchio stop-motion musical will be set during the rise of Mussolini in fascist Italy. pic.twitter.com/nkcrbkI3ol
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) December 29, 2021
del Toro’s Pinocchio was announced years ago, and fans of the Oscar-winning director are excited the new project is finally on its way. It was announced back in June of 2020 that Ewan McGregor was up for the role of Jiminy Cricket, and his casting news was confirmed by Netflix along with some other big names. Pinocchio also features the voices of Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, Finn Wolfhard, Tilda Swinton, Tim Black Nelson, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Burn Gorman, Gregory Mann, and David Bradley.
“It’s a very very very personal movie for me,” Del Toro previously shared. “The flip-side for me [has] always been Pinocchio and Frankenstein, are the same story. Because essentially, that’s the same story. The idea of a Pinocchio that talks about things that I consider very deep but it’s fun and it’s a musical at the same time, I find it really incredibly moving. Obviously, in animation, you get to see the movie in storyboards beginning to end many many times, and then you add the stop-motion. Right now, we are 50% animated and 50% in storyboards. Every time I watch the movie I just sob like a baby. It’s as personal as it gets, as moving as it gets. It’s unlike any version of the story you’ve ever seen. It’s completely unlike it. It subverts the moral underpinnings of the original fable, which is, in order to be a real boy you have to change. You’re going to become flesh and blood. This is about becoming a real boy by acting…acting like a real human, period.”
Are you excited for del Toro’s take on Pinocchio? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
