Guillermo del Toro/Henson Co. to remake Pinocchio

[lowercasegods]

I liked SOME aspects of the Henson's mid 90's Pinocchio. The puppet was superb. Martin Landau was wonderful. Filming in Prague was beautiful. And I'll always love Steve Barron's direction.

But the CGI cricket, let alone voiced by the oddly chosen David Doyle, just didn't work. The story was a bit choppy and rushed. The American cameos were totally unnecessary, and man, Jonathan Taylor Thomas...yeesh.

I think a stop motion Pinocchio is a great idea. I mean, you want to make a movie about a puppet? Use puppetry! And Stop Motion is an awesome form of puppetry. What Tim Burton did with Corpse Bride and what Henry Selick is doing in Coraline might just usher in a wave of stop motion films, which would offer a much needed release from the glut of CGI movies. Plus, stop motion tends to choose more original, substantial stories, where as CGI is content to just do another "talking animals escape the zoo" kiddie flick. No thank you.

So hopefully a stop motion Pinocchio will indeed happen. We'll see.

 

[Drtooth]

Pinocchio was originally a much darker story than Disney re-imagined in the 40's (though I'd say Disney's was still appropriately dark on its own). In the original serialized stories Pinocchio crushes the cricket underfoot and is at one point hung by the neck. So Gris Grimley and Del Toro would be well suited for this project, I believe.

Ugh, tell me about it. It's like thinking that all versions of Wizard of OZ should be like the MGM version... and they all struggle with that. We either get something new that gets panned, or something that slavishly follows it (like DIC's 1990's series) gets panned. And OZ was much darker than the original film... even the Muppet version got some of that right (the monkeys tearing apart the Scarecrow for one).

I, for one, want to see the darker underbelly of the tale, and not just a movie that's essentially a remake of the Disney cartoon with a couple changes to the plot to be slightly true to the book.

Of course, if there is one version of Pinocchio I'd like to see remade into a film, it's the Jay Ward Fractured Fairy Tale version... "I wish-a you was a real boy... then you could-a take up a paper route so I can-a take it easy for a while!"

 

[uppitymuppity]

I'm just reading all of this and must say that I love the idea!

I've met Del Toro before and he has to be one of the most down to earth and humbled directors i've ever ever met. Great vibes from him and I thought Pan's Labyrinth was brilliant. (Also he made a fantastic film called "The Devil's Backbone")

I'm excited to see this happen. I'll be the first one in line.