The wooden boy is getting an animated soul. The trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio has been released, offering our first look at Netflix’s star-studded stop-motion adaptation of the iconic story.
“I want to tell you a story,” narrator Sebastian J. Cricket, played by Ewan McGregor, announces in the trailer. “It’s a story you may think you know, but you don’t. A story of the wooden boy.”
The trailer introduces us to Pinocchio’s creator, Geppetto, who is grieving over the loss of his human son and carving a boy out of a tree he cut down. Pinocchio, of course, comes to life and appears to go on a fantastical adventure — though the trailer indicates nothing about a curse of truth-telling.
McGregor will be joined by newcomer Gregory Mann as Pinocchio and David Bradley as Geppetto. Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Ron Perlman, and John Turturro will also star. This will be del Toro’s first-ever animated feature, a new horizon for the acclaimed director of Oscar-winning films such as The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth.
His version, though, is not the only long nose in the game — del Toro’s Pinocchio is not to be confused with Disney’s own upcoming Pinocchio, a live-action musical also based on the classic fable. That film, from director Robert Zemeckis, will feature Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo, Luke Evans, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. A teaser for that adaptation was released at the end of May:
Confusions will likely abound with the practically identical name and the close release dates: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio will be out in theaters November and will hit Netflix in December; Disney’s Pinocchio will land on the streaming platform on September 8.
