Guillermo Del Toro, director of the 2017 Oscar-winning picture The Shape of Water, is currently helming an exciting, highly anticipated project. The cast for his stop-motion Pinocchio movie adaptation has been revealed by an actor close to the project, and needless to say, the line-up is impressive.
Actor David Bradley, who played Walder Frey in Game of Thrones, told Polish website Na Ekraine that he will be voicing the Pinocchio’s “father” Geppetto. Bradley’s other roles include Hogwart’s infamous caretaker Argus Filch in the Harry Potter films and separate parts in Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz and At World’s End. Bradley revealed that he will be working with Ron Perlman (the titular Hellboy in del Toro’s Hellboy franchise), two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds), Tilda Swinton (Snowpiercer), and Ewan McGregor (Birds of Prey) in Pinocchio. Though their roles have yet to be disclosed, the fact that these big names were included will make it exciting to see how del Toro’s adaptation will turn out.
While audiences are mostly familiar with Disney’s 1940 version Pinocchio, this stop-motion adaptation is not a family flick, but rather, portray a brutalist fable where Pinocchio lives in the fascist Mussolini era of 1930’s Italy. Just like The Shape of Water, del Toro’s Pinocchio will apparently be influenced by a movie monster as well. In the past, del Toro has revealed that the Blue Fairy, who guides Pinocchio in his journey to become a real boy, will actually be a dead girl’s spirit. Breaking away from a traditionally innocent story and instead adding surreal elements seems to be a trademark of del Toro’s films, and the strong casting for this unconventionally dark adaptation seems especially appropriate.
The Pinocchio project landed at Netflix in 2018, and is expected to release sometime in 2021.
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