Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Still Alive, Lands a New Writer

Screen Rant

By Dan Zinski

Published Jan 23, 2017

Guillermo del Toro enlists Over the Garden Wall creator Patrick McHale to help him write a second draft of his stop motion Pinocchio film.

Guillermo del Toro is known for being an eclectic talent, so it should be no surprise that his current slate of projects runs across a wide variety of genres, platforms, and formats. The director is still polishing up his next feature film, the Cold War-era fantasy-romance The Shape of Water. He also has written the story for the upcoming Pacific Rim: Uprising and recently set in motion talks for Hellboy 3. And he's still involved with the FX series The Strain, based on his own books co-written by Chuck Hogan, though that series is set to end after its fourth season in summer 2017.

Del Toro has also moved into the world of computer animation with the popular '80s-channeling Netflix monster series Trollhunters. Apparently animation agrees with the director because he's now going ahead with a second animated project, Pinocchio, which he has been talking about doing for a long time.

In an interview with Collider, del Toro revealed that his long-planned stop-motion adaptation of the classic story (not to be confused with the planned live-action version to star Robert Downey Jr.) is still on, and that he's enlisted the aid of a writer to help him bring the project to life:

"I’m preparing, also, my first stop-motion animation feature with Pinocchio, which I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a while, but I haven’t been able yet. But the last news on Pinocchio, which was very, very useful for me, was that I was looking for a co-writer who could be a great partner for me on this, and I’m happy to say that Patrick McHale from Over the Garden Wall is going to co-write the new draft of the screenplay with me."

Over the Garden Wall was an animated series Patrick McHale created for Cartoon Network in 2013. An adventure story about two brothers lost on a mysterious island, it garnered Emmys for Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation for animator Nick Cross. McHale's background in creating an acclaimed fantasy story makes him a seemingly ideal person to help del Toro on his second draft of Pinocchio.

Knowing del Toro's dark propensities, we can probably expect his Pinocchio to skew more toward the strange than the Disney version, which itself is not entirely without its disturbing elements. Del Toro's rich visual style translated into stop motion animation should make for a unique experience indeed. He has already shown what he can do with computer animation with Trollhunters, so moving into stop motion for him is just one more world to conquer.

One thing we know for sure: there will always be another project around the corner for Guillermo del Toro. Not everything he puts his hand to ends up being a masterpiece on the level of Pan's Labyrinth, but he always delivers the goods, whether he's creating mainstream sci-fi adventure, off-the-wall animation, or serialized horror.