Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Netflix Animation, Double Dare You! Productions, ShadowMachine, The Jim Henson Company, Necropia Entertainment

Netflix

Release dates

October 15, 2022 (LFF)

November 9, 2022 (United States)

December 9, 2022 (Netflix)

Directed by

Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

Screenplay by

Guillermo del Toro and Patrick McHale

Story by

Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins

Based on

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

Produced by

Guillermo del Toro, Lisa Henson, Gary Ungar, Alexander Bulkley, and Corey Campodonico

Starring

Gregory Mann as Pinocchio

Mann also voices Carlo, Gepetto’s deceased son

David Bradley as Master Geppetto

Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket

Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe

Tilda Swinton as the Wood Sprite

Swinton also voices Death, the Wood Sprite's sister

Ron Perlman as the Podestà

Finn Wolfhard as Candlewick

Cate Blanchett as Spazzatura

Burn Gorman as the Priest

John Turturro as Il Dottore

Tim Blake Nelson as the Black Rabbits

Tom Kenny as Benito Mussolini

Cinematography

Frank Passingham

Edited by

Ken Schretzmann

Music by

Alexandre Desplat

A NOTE FROM GUILLERMO DEL TORO

This is a fable very close to my heart, and one that has lived in many incarnations. And I trust the one we're offering to you is a particularly beautiful one.  The first time I thought about doing Pinocchio, I was very young and I thought there was a very intimate relationship between Pinocchio and Frankenstein, which I still believe exists: a character thrown into the world by a somewhat oblivious father. Now, the character has to find out who he is, what he's doing in this world and why he was born. The fundamental questions of spirit and being - what makes us human?

And, in the case of our Pinocchio, becoming who you are and refusing to "change" who you truly are for the sake of others. This, of course, goes counter to the traditional take on Pinocchio. Our tale explores many new questions in this familiar tale: Can something that was never alive become human? Is disobedience actually a virtue? Is there a dark side to obeying blindly?

What makes our span in this world precious and important?

The answer, surprisingly, is "Death.” Perhaps I came up with that answer because I am Mexican - perhaps I came up with it inspired by the poem by Sabines (which I translate roughly): A voice has whispered all my days, in my ear, softly, slowly. It said: Live, live, live! It was death.

I longed to do a film full of light, that would explain how brief and significant we are in our time with each other - and I wanted to do it with heartbreaking beauty and rendered by the most human craftsmanship. So, I chose one of the most delicate, artisanal forms of our art form - stop motion animation - and pushed it as much as possible.

To create a movie about a puppet executed by using puppets to tell the tale. A story about a world, as Mussolini ascends to power in Italy, where everyone behaves like a puppet - except the puppet. A tale where Pinocchio chooses to be disobedient in order to never betray his own soul - his true self.

This film was made by the very best animators from all walks of life, from every corner of the earth, and my partners, Mark Gustafson, Patrick McHale, Frank Passingham, Georgina Hayns, Guy Davis, Curt Enderle, Shadowmachine, the Henson Company, and many more stuck with us through years of effort.

Over one thousand days of shooting, more than 60 units of production, in Mexico and Portland, we wanted to prove, again and again, that animation is not a genre for kids, that it is a medium - an art form.

Stop motion in particular is quite magical because the bond between an animator and a puppet is intimate, almost sacred - and it's linear - you are shooting, frame by frame, a consecutive action. In real sets, with real props and real cinematography. In live-action film, you provoke the "accident,” the irruption of reality, and hope to capture it on film. In animation, you create it - the wind moving the hair, the flap of a coat, a misstep, eyes looking away, an Adam's apple swallowing - they’re all pre-planned and executed to bring the world into our puppets - to animate (from the word "anima" - soul) to make them live and feel.

In many ways, stop motion animation is to live action what Ginger Rogers was to Fred: we do all the same steps, but backwards in high heels.

Our goal - if we did our job right, is for you to forget that you are watching puppets or a technical marvel and find yourself watching reality and a group of actors - living and breathing.

Animation offers us the chance to see a supreme act of creation and recreation: to present to you the world and the human spirit through the hands of hundreds of artists and a very personal gaze ... to present the beauty and poignancy of the human spirit in a clear, powerful song to life, love, and loss.