Watch the trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
The trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is out. Following a behind-the-scenes featurette during Netflix’s online-only TUDUM event in September, the studio has now dropped a full-length trailer for the upcoming animated film. Co-directed by Academy Award-winning del Toro and animator Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox), this musical adaptation draws on the classic tale to add a touch of father-son conflict. The project was announced back in 2018, with Patrick McHale (Adventure Time) attached to co-write the script. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio comes out December 9 on Netflix.
Set in the 1930s, during the rise of fascism in Benito Mussolini’s Italy, the trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio opens with traveling cricketer Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) narrating a familiar children’s story, albeit with a caveat. appropriate. “It’s a story you might think you know, but you don’t,” he said, as our favorite wooden doll boy was brought to life, much to the shock of the locals in town. The premise is slightly different from Carlo Collodi’s original story, where woodcarver Mister Geppetto (David Bradley) mourns his dead son Carlo. After creating a wooden son from the trunk of a pine tree, an alien spirit visits his workshop and uses magic to bring the long-nosed doll to life.
Named Pinocchio (Gregory Mann), the wooden puppet’s personality is distant from Geppetto’s lost son. This one is loud, curious, and creates chaos in his path, clinging to the idea that he is actually a real boy, trying to blend in with the onlookers and make new friends and enemies. In Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, the last to arrive is the ringmaster Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), who lures a boy to his carnival troupe, turning the talking doll into a star attraction. In this version, Volpe is a combination of the sly anthropomorphic Fox and the cat from the original story—so three villains rolled into one. That said, the Volpe has other animal features, including wing-like sideburns.
The trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio also shows Gepetto handing Pinocchio a textbook, presumably traded for a ticket to the aforementioned festival. Despite his misdeeds, Gepetto seems to love Pinocchio as his own son while always admonishing him, something the little boy mistakes for hatred. “Tell him I love him,” said Pinocchio to the cricket, leaving the house one night. “And I will no longer be a burden.” In his merry journey, Pinocchio is I’m ready they end up in a fascist training camp, meeting Mussolini himself, and the Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton), a Sphinx-like personification of Death.
The Netflix animated film also stars Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) as the villain Candlewick, Ron Perlman (Drive) as Father Podestà, Cate Blanchett (bitumen) as Volpe’s mistreated monkey assistant Spazzatura, and Burn Gorman (Enola Holmes) as the Priest, Geppetto’s former client. “For me, it was important to show a world where everyone behaves like puppets and only puppets choose to disobey,” co-director del Toro said in a prepared statement, explaining his twist on the classic tale. “Then he finds his behavior, his soul, and his personality.”
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio comes out December 9 on Netflix.
