Guillermo del Toro and Netflix’s stop-motion Pinocchio movie adaptation has added actors like Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton to its voice cast. The Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water director spent more than a decade trying to get his retelling of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio off the ground before the project landed at Netflix in 2018. With plans to release the film sometime in 2021, the prodution is currently moving full speed ahead, with del Toro co-helming alongside Fantastic Mr. Fox animation director Mark Gustafson from a script he-cowrote. The latter is expected to overseee the movie’s animation photography while del Toro busies himself directing his next live-action film, Nightmare Alley (which began production at the end of January).
Story-wise, del Toro’s Pinocchio will retell the famous tale of the wooden puppet who comes to life, albeit this time against the backdrop of Benito Mussolini’s fascist reign over Italy during the 1930s. During a recent interview, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones actor David Bradley revealed he will voice Pinocchio’s creator and “father”, Geppetto, in the film. But in doing so, he also spilled the beans about a few other big-name cast members.
Speaking to the Polish outlet Na Ekranie, Bradley claimed McGregor and Swinton are also lending their voices to del Toro’s Pinocchio, along with Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz and Ron Perlman (who’s been working with del Toro since his feature debut on 1993’s Cronos). He briefly mentioned being happy about collaborating with del Toro again, having previously lent his voice to the filmmaker and Netflix’s Trollhunters animated TV series and starred on FX’s vampire show The Strain (which del Toro co-created with Chuck Hogan, based on their novels).
Bradley didn’t mention who his costars are voicing in Pinocchio, but it’s a fair bet Swinton is lending her famously other-wordly vocals to the Blue Fairy who, usually, guides Pinocchio on his journey. In the past, del Toro has said the Blue Fairy will actually be a dead girl’s spirit and the story, like so many of his projects, will be full of equally dark and surreal elements, but if anything that makes Swinton’s casting all the more appropriate. As for the other names Bradley mentioned, there’s a chance McGregor’s been cast to provide the voice of Pinocchio; he could readily imbue the character with the right amount of innocence. Of course, the wooden puppet boy has typically been portrayed by a child in animation and live-action (save for when Roberto Benigni played him in his infamous 2002 film adaptation), so it remains to be seen if del Toro breaks from tradition in that respect.
Speaking of Benigni: he actually changed things up and played Gepetto in Matteo Garrone’s recent live-action Pinocchio movie (which opened in Italy late last year). Elsewhere, Disney’s currently working on a live-action remake of its classic animated 1940 Pinocchio film, with Robert Zemeckis having recently closed a deal to direct. By the sound of things, del Toro’s retelling will be very different than either of those adaptations and hew closer to his previous work, especially when it comes to its themes about fascism and monster movie elements (the filmmaker’s also compared his vision to Frankenstein in the past). Add that to its great voice cast and it definitely sounds like something to look forward to.
Pinocchio is expected to begin streaming on Netflix in 2021.
