In yet another quest to become a real human boy, Pinocchio takes us to pre-World War II Italy
The trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio starts off with Sebastian J Cricket's not so humble monologue: "I want to tell you a story, it's a story you think you know...but you don't." The insect character then reveals why he, of all insects, has the right to tell Pinocchio's twisted adventure: "You see I, Sebastian J Cricket, was there, as a matter of fact, I lived in the heart of the wooden boy."
Set in pre-World War II Italy, Del Toro's first stop-motion movie was largely kept under wraps since 2008. The adaptation of the popular children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) by Italian writer Carlo Collodi found it difficult to get the project off the ground until Netflix picked it up in 2018.
In the original story, a carpenter named Master Antonio, who everyone calls "Master Cherry" has found a block of wood that he plans to carve into a leg for his new table. When he starts, however, the log screams. Horrified by what he has just heard, Master Cherry hands the log to his neighbour Geppetto, a poor puppeteer who performs in exchange for "a crust of bread and a glass of wine".
Geppetto carves the block into a boy and names him "Pinocchio". As soon as the wooden boy's nose has been carved, it begins to grow every time he lies.
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Over the years, we have seen different renditions of the story. Some of the most memorable ones were The Adventures of Buratino, a 1959 Soviet animation directed by the "patriarch of Russian animation", Ivan Ivanov-Vano, along with Dmitriy Babichenko and Mikhail Botov. There was also the popular Disney classic film Pinocchio (1940), which was the second animated feature film produced by Disney, and the live-action musical Pinocchio (2002), that was written, directed and starred by Roberto Benigni.
For Del Toro's 2022 adaptation, audiences are expected to see a darker version of the story. In a 2012 interview, the filmmaker compared the classic story of Pinocchio to Frankenstein. "They are both about creatures that are created and then get lost in a world they don't understand. And they are both journeys of understanding, and journeys of evolution of the spirit."
The film will also have a star-studded cast including David Bradley as Gepetto, Finn Wolfhard as Lampwick, Cate Blanchett as Sprezzatura the Monkey, Tilda Swinton as the Fairy with Turquoise Hair, John Turturro as Master Cherry, Christoph Waltz as the Fox, and Gregory Mann as the titular character.
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You can watch Pinocchio 2022's trailer below: