showbiz

This sure isn’t Disney’s Pinocchio

Posted on Monday, Nov. 17, 2008
by Cineplex Entertainment

Guillermo del Toro

Not heeding the warning that was Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio, Guillermo del Toro, the visionary director behind Oscar-winning fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, has decided that the world needs another remake about the boy made of wood, reports Variety.com.

The Mexican writer-producer-director, known for his rather macabre treatment of fables, revealed to horror movie site bloodydisgusting.com that he's developing a dark, stop-motion animated version of Pinocchio with the Jim Henson Company.

This is, of course, in addition to the myriad other projects del Toro is juggling, including The Hobbit, a remake of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Slaughterhouse-Five, to name a few.

As well as serving as executive producer on the re-vamped Pinocchio, del Toro is set to work on the screenplay with Gris Grimly, who illustrated a 2002 version of Carlo Collodi’s classic, and who will assume co-director duties with Adam Parrish King. In fact, del Toro revealed that Grimley's book was the inspiration behind the feature.

"The idea came from Gris, and everybody loves his book about it. The original story is far more perverse and spooky and [has a] semi-necrophilia vibe to it in certain aspects. Gris certainly has that vein in him, he wants to do this with that original spookiness in it…."

He confided that creating the necessary "full-scale puppet universe" would take about three years to complete, which leaves much time to speculate on whether this is going to be a triumph or bare the Benigni double-kiss of mediocrity.

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Do you think del Toro's take on Pinocchio will work? Would you watch a stop-motion animated version of the Disney classic? Comment below!

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