Guillermo del Toro Reveals When His Pinocchio Musical Will Hit Netflix

12/01/2021 08:30 pm EST

Next year will see the release of not just one, but two different feature films inspired by the classic story of Pinocchio. One of them is what you'd expect, a live-action remake of the classic Disney animated movie. Robert Zemeckis is directing that film with Tom Hanks set to star as Geppetto. The other Pinocchio flick is a lot more mysterious and intriguing. Visionary director Guillermo del Toro has partnered with Netflix for a darker version of the tale, a stop-motion animated musical that sounds right up the auteur's alley.

Movie fans are definitely excited to see what kind of strange story del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson are cooking up. They'll have to wait a little longer, though, because the film won't arrive until late 2022.

"The movie will come out last quarter of 2022," Del Toro told Collider in a recent interview. "It's curious because it's been almost five years since Shape of Water and now it's going to be two movies in a row one after the other."

Del Toro's animated Pinocchio features the voices of Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, Ewan McGregor, Finn Wolfhard, Tilda Swinton, Tim Black Nelson, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Burn Gorman, Gregory Mann, and David Bradley. A lot of del Toro's usual collaborators are part of this cast, which likely makes the experience even more personal to the filmmaker. 

"It's a very very very personal movie for me," Del Toro said. "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? Let us know in the comments!

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