by Nathaniel R
This morning Netflix released the poster and teaser to Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio so it's really happening. Del Toro always has so many projects in development that it's something of a surprise when any of the long gestating projects emerges, complete. They're being somewhat cagey about actual dates beyond "November in theaters / December on Netflix" but a month is good enough for now. The trailer poster and quick Yes No Maybe So thoughts are after the jump...
YES - It's Del Toro so it will surely be beautiful to look at and imaginative throughout.
NO - Can we stop pretending that we haven't actually heard stories we've totally heard a thousand times already. There's no crime in telling beloved stories again, just tell them well. (Remember when Andrew Garfield's first Spider-Man flick sold itself this way and it was the same exact story that it had always been?!)
MAYBE SO - About that voice cast...
The film features an all-star voice cast with Ewan McGregor as Cricket, David Bradley as Geppetto, and introducing Gregory Mann as Pinocchio. Other cast includes Finn Wolfhard, Academy Award® winner Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, with Academy Award® winner Christoph Waltz and Academy Award® winner Tilda Swinton.
It won't surprise you (since we've mentioned it before) that we're very tired of hearing celebrity voices in animated films. We totally love both Ewan McGregor and Cate Blanchett (as you know) but all we can think watching this is "oh, it's Ewan and Cate!". We just want great character work. The animation and the characters are supposed to be the sell.
Through no fault of its own this particular story will be going up against very recent memories of Robert Zemeckis own version of the story which will premiere on Disney+ in September 8th. How will they compare? Recent history suggests that the Del Toro will be far greater than the Zemeckis but you never know!