Trailer released for Del Toro’s much-anticipated ‘Pinocchio’ adaptation
Mexico City, Jan 24 (EFE).- An official teaser was released Monday for a new adaptation of the classic children’s tale “Pinocchio,” an upcoming stop-motion musical that acclaimed Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is bringing to Netflix.
“I want to tell you a story. It’s a story you may think you know, but you don’t. Not really. You see, I, Sebastian J. Cricket, was there. As a matter of fact, I lived, actually lived, in the heart of the wooden boy,” a coffee-drinking, bluish-gray insect character voiced by Ewan McGregor says in the initial trailer from inside a candle-lit tree trunk.
The cricket is apparently a new take on the top hat-wearing Jiminy Cricket, a beloved companion for the puppet-turned-boy that initially appeared in Walt Disney’s 1940 animated musical fantasy film based on Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s book “The Adventures of Pinocchio.”
Although the 40-second video released by the streaming platform provides little in the way of plot details, some signs of Del Toro’s reinvention of the literary classic can be observed.
Four wooden-framed pictures that are visible behind Sebastian J. Cricket appear to be images of the old Italian childless woodcarver Geppetto and Pinocchio. And at the end of the clip, the insect leaps out of his O-shaped tree hole and into a wintry, tree-filled landscape.
Fans of Pinocchio and Del Toro, a director best known for the Academy Award-winning fantasy films “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and “The Shape of Water” (2017), still have some waiting to do though, since Netflix revealed in the trailer that the film will premiere in December 2022.
“Guillermo del Toro reinvents Carlo Collodi’s classic tale of the wooden marionette who is magically brought to life in order to mend the heart of a grieving woodcarver named Geppetto,” Netflix’s official synopsis reads.
“This whimsical, stop-motion musical directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson follows the mischievous and disobedient adventures of Pinocchio in his pursuit of a place in the world.”
Del Toro’s involvement in this long-awaited adaptation dates back to 2008, when it was announced that he was planning to executive-produce and co-write a stop-motion version of the famed story in collaboration with the Jim Henson Co.
His role gradually grew further until news broke that he would co-direct the film with Gustafson.
Del Toro said a decade ago that his version would be more faithful to Collodi’s novel and also be “more surreal and slightly darker than what we’ve seen before.”
The Mexican director’s latest project comes on the heels of “Nightmare Alley,” a psychological thriller that was based on a likenamed 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham and is a remake of the likenamed 1947 film noir classic directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Tyrone Power.
The premiere of Del Toro’s new film on Netflix will roughly coincide with Disney’s release of its own Pinocchio remake: a live-action, computer-animated musical drama that will be directed by Robert Zemeckis and star Tom Hanks as Geppetto. EFE
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