Guiller­mo del Toro’s stop-motion Pinoc­chio is tak­ing shape

While every­one here in the States con­tin­ues fight­ing against the nat­ur­al slug­gish­ness and dimin­ished pro­duc­tiv­i­ty endem­ic to these days of lock­down and quar­an­tine, Guiller­mo del Toro has been hard at work.

His next slat­ed fea­ture project, a stop-motion reimag­in­ing of the Pinoc­chio sto­ry for Net­flix, has con­tin­ued pro­duc­tion with­out pause while everyone’s been stuck at home. We com­mon folk may frit­ter away our time play­ing with action fig­ures; mean­while, Del Toro’s play­ing with action fig­ures of his own, but in a more dis­ci­plined and organ­ised way.

Net­flix reas­sured the pub­lic that everything’s going just fine by announc­ing the cast list for this lat­est iter­a­tion of Pinoc­chio just today. The wood­en boy who came to life will be voiced by a new­com­er, unknown young­ster Gre­go­ry Mann, and his pal Crick­et (no Jiminy here, per­haps for fear of lit­i­ga­tion from the legal team at Dis­ney?) will have the vel­vety tenor of Ewan McGre­gor.

The rest of the cast will be filled out by David Bradley – in the role of kind­ly pup­peteer Gep­pet­to – as well as Til­da Swin­ton, Christoph Waltz, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Ron Perl­man, John Tur­tur­ro, and Tim Blake Nel­son. Who among them will voice the gar­gan­tu­an whale Mon­stro? We can only hope the answer will be Til­da Swinton.

For those curi­ous about the visu­al pro­file of del Toro’s take on stop-motion, the filmmaker’s first for­ay into the form, let us note that he’s shar­ing direc­tor cred­it with Mark Gustafson of The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox fame. While del Toro’s recent adven­tures in car­toon ani­ma­tion on the Troll­hunters series might sug­gest some­thing on the slick­er and clean­er side, Gustafson’s influ­ence hints at an earth­i­er, found-object-strewn style.

In terms of sto­ry, it’s already been solid­i­fied that del Toro wants to fash­ion this after the mag­i­cal real­ism of Pan’s Labyrinth by return­ing the tale to its ori­gins in Mussolini’s fas­cist Italy. What’s more, the film will also have a musi­cal com­po­nent, with songs com­posed by the great Alexan­dre Desplat.

In terms of pedi­gree alone, this pro­duc­tion has worked itself into a promis­ing gum­bo of well-regard­ed direc­tors and actors and com­posers. And with Netflix’s direct wrap-to-release online pipeline, it might not be too long until we see this one, either.