Variety is reporting that Guillermo Del Toro will co-direct his first animated feature with Mark Gustafson. The duo will be taking on Pinocchio in a pre-WWII setting.
Several of Del Toro’s movies have taken place in and around the big world changing war, so it doesn’t come as a complete surprise that this project is set in the ’30s and ’40s. “It was when everyone was behaving like a puppet, except for puppets,” Del Toro told the magazine.
This version is aimed at an audience 10 years and up, and a bit scarier than the Disney film. For instance: “the Blue Fairy is really a dead girl’s spirit,” del Toro said. “Pinocchio has strange moments of lucid dreaming bordering on hallucinations, with black rabbits. The sperm whale that swallows Pinocchio was actually a giant dogfish, which allows for more classical scale and design.
The animated adaptation will be a 3D stop-motion featured produced by the Jim Henson Company.
Well the Disney one scares the crap out of me, cannot wait to see what Del Toro can do with it.
I’d have rather had “Pinocchio: Vampire Killer” done by Del Toro.