The concept of twin films is hardly a new phenomenon, but in the case of the dueling Pinocchio adaptations that are both coming to streaming next year, the differences between the two projects couldn’t be more stark.
On one hand we have Disney Plus’ big budget hybrid of live-action and CGI, which has Back to the Future and Forrest Gump‘s Robert Zemeckis directing Tom Hanks as Gepetto with Cynthia Erivo, Luke Evans, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Keegan Michael-Key among the supporting cast.
Meanwhile, Guillermo del Toro has a dark, twisted fantasy musical on its way to Netflix that’s roped in Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, Finn Wolfhard and his good luck charm Ron Perlman to lend their voices to a stop-motion spin on the original Italian novel, so we can expect it to be a million miles away from the Disneyfied tropes of the story that have become staples of popular culture.
Like most of del Toro’s passion projects, Pinocchio had spent years in development before production got underway, but in an interview with Collider the two-time Academy Award winner confirmed it’ll be with us before the end of next year.
“The movie will come out last quarter of 2022. It’s curious because it’s been almost five years since Shape of Water and now it’s going to be two movies in a row one after the other.”
Having been absent from our screens since The Shape of Water, this month’s Nightmare Alley and Pinocchio give us the gift of two new del Toro features in quick succession, and both of them see the filmmaker firmly in his fantastical, psychological wheelhouse.