Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio plan

Friday, 14 November 2008

Guillermo Del Toro is to produce a new "darker" version of 'Pinocchio'.

The 'Hellboy' director is teaming up with 'Muppets' creators The Jim Henson company to make a stop-motion film based on authors Gris Grimly - who will also direct - and Carlo Collodi's dark version of the fairytale.

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Guillermo told horror movie website Bloody Disgusting: "The idea came from Gris, and everybody loves his book about it. The original story is far more perverse and spooky and semi-necrophilia vibe to it in certain aspects. Gris certainly has that vein in him, he wants to do this with that original spookiness in it, we are trying to get it going.

"The Jim Henson Company is the behind it and we are currently working on the screenplay. It's not coming to a screen near you any time soon, even if it were to begin today it would be about three years in the making, but we are working to make it happen. A full-scale puppet universe takes time".

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In the darker version of the story, when Pinocchio the puppet comes to life, his maker Gepetto is dismayed to learn that his creation delights in playing mean tricks on people and enjoys being bad.

The director is also planning another puppet movie after the live-action idea for his new project proved too expensive.

He added: "I am not at liberty to speak about it right now, but one of the hundred things we are doing is developing a full-scale puppet film of my own as well. The beginning of the film has a puppet sequence, and when we budgeted it out as live-action it came in around $7 million. The studio said 'No', so I proposed we do it with puppets."