MOVIE NEWS – Netflix seems to have beaten Disney to the punch by being the first to release a teaser for the Guillermo del Toro directed Pinocchio movie.

While fans are waiting for Disney to release a live-action version of Pinocchio this fall, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, Guillermo del Toro’s version of the classic story about the wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy will be released this December. Despite arriving on Netflix a few months after the Disney film, del Toro’s stop-motion musical version has beaten Disney to the punch by releasing the first trailer for the movie in the form of a teaser trailer, which introduces audiences to Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket.

The collaboration between The Jim Henson Company, ShadowMachine and del Toro is, as you might have guessed, a well-crafted and beautifully animated film that also boasts some impressive voice acting. In addition to McGregor as the “cricket in the heart of a wooden boy”, the film also stars David Bradley as Geppetto, Gregory Mann as Pinocchio, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson and Burn Gorman, alongside Christoph Waltz and Tilda Swinton.

With Pinocchio, the visionary director has the chance to make his mark in the world of stop-motion animation, once thought to be dying out, but reality seems to have proven such negativity wrong.

As one of the greatest fantasy directors in film history, Guillermo del Toro has earned the right to decide what films he makes, but when it came to making an animated version of the Pinocchio story, he said he felt a connection to both the medium of animation and the character of Pinocchio himself.

“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,” the director said in 2018 when the project was announced. “In our story, Pinocchio is 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.”

Of course, Disney is also releasing a live-action version of its own animated Pinocchio movie, joining the long line of remakes lining up at Disney’s door. While two films based on the same character and general storyline might prove problematic in different circumstances, there is no doubt that the tone and style of Guillermo del Toro’s version will ensure that the Disney whale does not swallow it up.

Source: Espinof