Guillermo Del Toro’s stop-motion version of Pinocchio has been in talks for a couple of years now (we first reported it back in 2018), but production on the film has finally begun. Specifically, the voice acting for the film has started recording, and Ewan McGregor has confirmed that he will be portraying Pinocchio’s pint-sized conscious, Jiminy Cricket:
“I’m playing Jiminy Cricket in Guillermo del Toro’s version of Pinocchio. That I had started working on before I left for New York, so some of that is recorded. And of course it’s stop-frame animation, so it’s going to take them a great long time to make that film. But my first part, which is recording his dialogue, is sort of done. There may or may not be a song that needs to be recorded. I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss that.”
The script, co-written by del Toro and Patrick McHale, will take place in Italy during the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The rest of the cast includes David Bradley, Ron Perlman, Tilda Swinton and Christoph Waltz.