Guiller­mo del Toro is mak­ing an ani­mat­ed Pinoc­chio fea­ture for Netflix

“No art form has influ­enced my life and my work more than ani­ma­tion and no sin­gle char­ac­ter in his­to­ry has had as deep of a per­son­al con­nec­tion to me as Pinocchio.”

It’s safe to say that Guiller­mo del Toro has dreamt of mak­ing his own ver­sion of Pinoc­chio for a very long time – and now that dream is about to become real­i­ty cour­tesy of Net­flix, who have com­mis­sioned the Oscar-win­ning cre­ator of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water to direct, write and pro­duce a fea­ture-length stop-motion musi­cal based on the clas­sic children’s tale.

Last year del Toro put rumours of this long-moot­ed project to bed, telling reporters at the 2017 Venice Film Fes­ti­val that a poten­tial deal with Ama­zon had bro­ken down due to the required $35 mil­lion bud­get. Thank­ful­ly it appears that he suc­ceed­ed in cap­tur­ing the imag­i­na­tions of anoth­er all-con­quer­ing stream­ing giant. Fol­low­ing the recent com­put­er-ani­mat­ed series Troll­hunters and the upcom­ing Guiller­mo del Toro Presents 10 After Mid­night, Pinoc­chio will mark the third col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Mex­i­can film­mak­er and Netflix.

More excit­ing­ly still, del Toro is also part­ner­ing with The Jim Hen­son Com­pa­ny to help realise his life­long pas­sion project. The film’s pup­pets are being built by Mack­in­non and Saun­ders of Corpse Bride fame, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from Gris Grimly’s orig­i­nal design for the Pinoc­chio character.

Del Toro says that his orig­i­nal take on Ital­ian writer Car­lo Collodi’s fable will be set in 1930s Italy dur­ing the ascen­sion of fas­cism and Mus­soli­ni, and that the script imag­ines the tit­u­lar pro­tag­o­nist as ​“an inno­cent soul with an uncar­ing father who gets lost in a world he can­not com­pre­hend. He embarks on an extra­or­di­nary jour­ney that leaves him with a deep under­stand­ing of his father and the real world.”

Giv­en del Toro’s pen­chant for dark fairy tales, we’re expect­ing some­thing even weird­er and more won­drous than the beloved Dis­ney ani­ma­tion from 1940.