From The Darkly Imaginative Mind Of Guillermo del Toro, Netflix's 'Pinocchio' To Premiere At Annecy Animation Festival In June

From Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro comes a much-anticipated stop-motion version of the children's classic Pinocchio made only the way he can, with a mixture of adorable and creepy.

It has been announced that the long in production adaptation of the puppet come to life will have its premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival in France this June, before streaming on Netflix sometime in December. The film has been a labor of love for del Toro, who has gone through a slew of hold-ups throughout the production of his twisted take on the story.

Based on the novel by Carlo Collodi, this will be the first time Guillermo has directed a musical. In an exclusive with Collider, The Shape of Water director discussed his inspirations for the project back in December of 2021:

"It's a very very very personal movie for me. The flip-side for me [has] always been Pinocchio and Frankenstein are the same story...

"The idea of a Pinocchio that talks about things that I consider very deep, but it's fun and it's a musical at the same time, I find it really incredibly moving. Obviously, in animation, you get to see the movie in storyboards beginning to end many many times, and then you add the stop-motion. Right now, we are 50% animated and 50% in storyboards.

"Every time I watch the movie I just sob like a baby. It's as personal as it gets, as moving as it gets. It's unlike any version of the story you've ever seen. It's completely unlike it. It subverts the moral underpinnings of the original fable, which is; in order to be a real boy, you have to change. You're going to become flesh and blood.

"This is about becoming a real boy by acting...acting like a real human, period."

The film is more of its own entity - not your typical rehash of what Disney made popular back in 1940.

We got a first look at the film back in January when Netflix released a short teaser, starring the vocal talents of Ewan McGregor playing Sebastian J. Cricket.

The moody, yet delightful clip acted as a mere taste of what audiences can expect from the playfully dark mind of Guillermo del Toro, who has made an art form out of taking macabre worlds and finding the beauty within.

Pinocchio also stars Cate Blanchett, Finn Wolfhard, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro, Christoph Waltz, Ron Pearlman, Tim Blake Nelson, David Bradley, Burn Gorman, and Gregory Man as the titular puppet.

If the driector is this enthusiastic, we can't wait to hear what the reviews say.