Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro reinvents the classic tale of the wooden marionette who is magically brought to life in order to mend the heart of a grieving woodcarver named Geppetto. This whimsical, stop-motion film directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson follows the mischievous and disobedient adventures of Pinocchio in his pursuit of a place in the world.
“From my many wanderings on this earth, I had so much to say about imperfect fathers and imperfect sons,” Ewan McGregor’s Sebastian J. Cricket narrates at the start of the trailer. “I want to tell you a story. It’s a story you may think you know, but you don’t — the story of the wooden boy.”
The trailer, which follows the first teaser footage from January, reveals footage of lonely woodcutter Geppetto’s (David Bradley) creation of Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) and the puppet boy’s adventures alongside his creator.
The film marks del Toro’s first feature animated project, relocating the tale to the time period of the 1930s, setting it against the backdrop of growing fascism in Italy as Benito Mussolini consolidates control of the government.
The film is narrated by Ewan McGregor (from Obi Wan Kenobi), with additional voice actors including Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, Cate Blanchett and John Turturro.
Guillermo del Toro co-directs the film with Mark Gustafson and co-wrote the screenplay with Patrick McHale. The movie is the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s first feature for Netflix, but follows several TV projects he’s created for the streamer, including animated series “Trollhunters,” “3Below” and “Wizards” as well as the live-action horror anthology series “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities,” premiering soon.
Del Toro’s film is one of three movies this year to center around the world’s most iconic puppet. In March, Lionsgate Entertainment released the CGI animated feature “Pinocchio: A True Story,” with Pauly Shore in the title role. Disney is also prepping a Robert Zemeckis-directed live-action remake of their 1940 animated version of “Pinocchio,” which is set to begin streaming on Disney+ starting Sept. 8.
“Pinocchio” will have a theatrical run in theaters in November before debuting on Netflix in December.