A new still from Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio reveals a first look at the animated stop-motion film's two lead characters.
At the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Del Toro debuted a clip and a teaser trailer for his dark and twisted Pinocchio film, which is slated to premiere on Netflix in December. A key still from the event features the character Geppetto (David Bradley), seemingly after completing work on his wooden son, Pinocchio (Gregory Mann). Additional stills also feature Pinocchio and Geppetto, as well as Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) and Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz).
Del Toro's Netflix film is based upon Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio. Del Toro's Pinocchio is not to be confused with director Robert Zemeckis' Pinocchio, a live-action remake of Disney's 1940 animated adaptation of Collodi's book, which is slated to premiere on Disney+ in September. Zemeckis' film, a decidedly more lighthearted affair and Del Toro's, stars Tom Hanks as Geppetto Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as the voice of Pinocchio.
Del Toro began developing his adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio in 2008. The project lingered in development until late 2017, when Del Toro confirmed that it was essentially dead, as no studio was willing to fund it. "It's not happening," the director told IGN at the time. "But the idea was to do Pinocchio during the ascension of fascism in Italy, with Mussolini. It was a good time to discuss the idea of being a puppet or being a human, but you know, it's not in progress."
In late 2018, however, it was reported that Del Toro would indeed be making his animated directorial debut with Pinocchio, which would be released through Netflix. The director opened up about the revived film in early 2022, comparing it to his live-action feature Nightmare Alley. "Obviously, Pinocchio has a big section in a carnival," Del Toro told Rotten Tomatoes. "And there's strange little echoes between the two, 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."
In addition to Bradley as Geppetto, Mann as Pinocchio, McGregor as Cricket and Waltz as Volpe, Del Toro's Pinocchio stars the voices of Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson and Burn Gorman. Del Toro is co-directing the film with Mark Gustafson from a script the former wrote with Patrick McHale.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio premieres on Netflix in December 2022.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter