Last week we reported that director/executive producer extraordinaire, Guillermo del Toro, had decided to expand his involvement with the film ‘Pinocchio’ and signed on to co-direct the movie. Now while in Cannes, he revealed some details about the film and who he thinks would be great to be in the cast.
Taking a page out of the latest craze of fairy tale adaptations, this version of ‘Pinocchio’ is not your mother’s Disney animated edition but is based on the dark and gothic adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s fairy tale which del Toro has enthusiastically embraced. For example, in the book, the Talking Cricket (otherwise known as Jiminy in the Disney film) is actually killed by Pinocchio after he gives him some advice. The cricket comes back to life as a ghost to continue advising the wayward puppet. As you can see, there’ll be no wishing upon a star in del Toro’s movie! To bring out that edginess the feel of the film, del Toro had announced that the film will be in 3D so that it would seem “like it bleeds out into the audience at the edges.”
Also fascinating is the little snippet that Daniel Radcliffe (‘The Woman in Black’, ‘Harry Potter’ film franchise) is interested in lending his voice to the film. Del Toro mentioned that Radcliffe had personally approached him “to get involved in the project.” He also went on to say that his wish list dream cast included Tom Waits and Christopher Walken (who he thought would be a great choice to voice the fox in the story).
Because stop motion animation is a painstakingly long method of filming, ‘Pinocchio’ isn’t slated to be released until 2014. The film is still in the pre-production stage, so no one yet has officially signed on to voice any of the characters for the film but del Toro’s choices so far seem pretty good. While the track record for rebooted fairy tale movies are hit and miss (as seen with ‘Mirror, Mirror,’ ‘Red Riding Hood,’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’), the darkness of Collodi’s version may be one that would translate well onto the big screen and that audiences may embrace. With del Toro behind the camera, the end results will truly be something unexpected and exceptional.
Source: THR
