The upcoming 3-D movie will be edgier and scarier than the 1940 animated Disney classic.
- Feb 18, 2011
AceShowbiz - Guillermo del Toro is going to bring Pinocchio to life again. The filmmaker and Jim Henson Company are teaming up to produce a new stop-motion animated movie based on the Carlo Collodi fairy tale that has been brought to big screen by Disney in 1940.
Del Toro's "Pinocchio (2012)" is going to be made in 3-D and is said to be edgier and scarier than the Disney classic. His version is aimed at 10 years and up. "There has to be darkness in any fairy tale or children's narrative work, something the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and Walt Disney understood," he states.
"We tend to call something Disney-fied, but a lot of people forget how powerfully disturbing the best animated Disney movies are, including those kids being turned into donkeys in Pinocchio," del Toro continues. "What we're trying to do is present a Pinocchio that is more faithful to the take that Collodi wrote. That is more surreal and slightly darker than what we've seen before."
Detailing further on how he will present the darker version of "Pinocchio", del Toro shares, "The Blue Fairy is really a dead girl's spirit. Pinocchio has strange moments of lucid dreaming bordering on hallucinations, with black rabbits. The sperm whale that swallows Pinocchio was actually a giant dogfish, which allows for more classical scale and design. The many mishaps Pinocchio goes through include several near-death close calls, a lot more harrowing moments."
He then concludes, "The key with this is not making any of it feel gratuitous, because the story is integrated with moments of comedy and beauty. He's one of the great characters, whose purity and innocence allows him to survive in this bleak landscape of robbers and thugs, emerging from the darkness with his soul intact."
Del Toro and Matthew Robbins write down the storyline, and Robbins pens the script. Gris Grimly and Mark Gustafson have been tapped to direct the movie with production planned to kick off later this year. Meanwhile, Deadline Hollywood has been provided with some images by del Toro to convey the proposed look of the film.
