By Guillermo del Toro’s will share the helm on his forthcoming 3D stop-motion Pinocchio with Mark Gustafson, it was announced today. Gustafson served as animation director on Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox after Henry Selick left the project to direct Coraline.
The film is adapted from Gris Grimly’s novel of the same name and sets the Pinocchio story in Italy between the first and second World Wars. “It was a time when everyone was behaving like a puppet, except the puppets,” says del Toro, impishly but meaninglessly. His darker Pinocchio will feature “lucid dreaming bordering on hallucinations,” and a “bleak landscape of robbers and thugs.”
Production is due to start in summer 2013 and last a year. A hint at casting from del Toro? He’s considering Tom Waits as Geppetto. All in all, an intriguing project.
[via Variety]