If it feels like years since we first heard about Guillermo del Toro's planned Pinocchio adaptation, it's because it has been! It may seem hard to believe, but the Nightmare Alley director has been trying to realize his vision for a stop-motion animated musical take on the classic fairy tale for close to a decade, and we finally have a first look courtesy of a brief trailer.
The teaser introduces a new take on Jiminy Cricket named Sebastian J. Cricket, who'll be voiced by Ewan McGregor. Sebastian tells us that he wants to tell us a story, and it's "a story you may think you know, but you don't... not really."
Disney's previous adaptation was considerably lighter in tone than Carlo Collodi’s novel (in which the titular wooden boy actually kills the talking cricket... just to give you some idea of how dark things get), so it'll be interesting to see how much Del Toro draws from the source material.
The official synopsis reads: "Pinocchio follows the extraordinary journey of a wooden boy magically brought to life by a father’s wish. Set during the rise of Fascism in Mussolini’s Italy, del Toro's Pinocchio is a story of love and disobedience as Pinocchio struggles to live up to his father’s expectations."
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio also features the voice talents of Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, David Bradley and Gregory Mann. The movie is set to hit Netflix this December.