Two Pinocchios has already hit screens this year, but Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is unlike any adaptation of the classic story that has come before. Told in beautifully rendered stop-motion animation with del Toro's flair for the otherworldly, Pinocchio is coming to Netflix this December. Set during the rise of Mussolini in 1930s Fascist Italy, the cast includes a veritable list of previous del Toro collaborators and newcomers alike.
Finn Wolfhard, Ron Perlman, Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, and Tim Blake Nelson all lend their voices to the project, with Gregory Mann voicing the titular puppet. Pinocchio is co-directed by Mark Gustafson, a skilled director and animator who has worked on films like Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Screen Rant sat down with Gustafson and del Toro to talk Pinocchio, including why it is set in 1930s Italy, what a typical day on the stop-motion set looked like, and releasing their adaptation in a year when two other Pinocchios have hit screens.
Gustafson and del Toro Share Pinocchio Stories
Screen Rant: Guillermo, you were speaking about this story being seminal to your childhood, and you've been working on this for so long. What's the feeling of seeing it all finally coming together like this?
Guillermo del Toro: What happens with a movie that connects this deeply, and it happens only now and then. I have done 11 or 12 films, and it happens maybe four or five times in that 30-year career. When it moves you exactly the same way every time you see it, you know you did what you wanted or you were delivered a beautiful gift by an entire crew.
And when I see this movie, no matter how many times, when mixing the reels or color correcting the reels, I'm moved by exactly the same things. And there's a very, very clichéd phrase that says it exceeded my expectations. But it really is one of those great moments, the photo finish moment where you say, whatever happens with this film, it's a beautiful film. And it moves me and everybody involved. We have hundreds of people involved and every one of them gave blood sweat and tears to this to the last day. So. it's astounding. Now there is a Pinocchio for people to like, dislike, accept, [or] embrace. It's beautiful, a new version of a tale, a song that can be sung thousands of times because every voice will change it.
That shows in the craftsmanship of this film. Mark, what was a typical day like on set for you both? Are you getting involved in moving all the stop-motion?
Mark Gustafson: Well, it's interesting when you say a day on set because we're shooting in stop-motion, and we have multiple sets. And when I say multiple, at one point, we had 60 units going at the same time. It's like, imagine a day is madness, it's organized madness. Our scheduler was one of the unsung heroes of this whole operation, tracking all those puppets, all those resources, all the cameras, all the animators, and you're not shooting in sequence. So it's a giant puzzle. It's a plan that we come up with every evening. And then the next day, we watch it fall apart. But you have to immediately plan again. So it's a marathon. But sometimes during the day, it feels like a sprint, because there's so much going on.
Guillermo del Toro: There are several key moments, but the key moment is the briefings when you brief the animators to go, and you talk to them as actors, because that's what they are. You say, "This is what the scene is about. This is what the character is feeling." And then you discuss each minute gesture in detail, and then you tell them now go do it. And if you find something else do it. And they feel like they can solve a technical problem on the day by changing this and that in the spirit of the scene. But it's basically a military operation. That is a puzzle that fortunately, my discipline as a director is very, very much since I started, that of an animator or an effects guy. I can break down a scene into its components. So our dialogue in that sense, was effortless.
Mark Gustafson: The other thing is, they have to have the flexibility to adjust because they're shooting a shot. It might take them a day, it might take them a week, it might take them a month to shoot a shot. And inevitably, you have to adjust. Things go wrong, and you have to fix them on the fly because you can't necessarily go back and start over. Yeah, although occasionally you do.
Guillermo del Toro: We did more than most. Yeah, we did read things on that. But look, the beautiful thing is I have a background in craftsmanship and I have animated myself. And I've directed animation before many times. So when we spoke, we were speaking to our model maker. I paint models. If I'm talking to a mold maker, I've done molds. I know what a core mold is and an outer core. And so we both have that capacity to understand.
It's not a live-action director that comes in and says, "I don't understand that. What do you mean?" When one of the shots takes two and a half months to do, which it did, I understand why. And I know how intricate this shot is because of the rigs that are sustaining the characters, the rig that the cameras are on, what is going to need to pop out and pop in, and blah blah, blah. So there's a very good understanding.
You started talking about this film in 2008. In 2022, two Pinocchio movies are coming out. What was your reaction to finding out Disney is also releasing this adaptation?
Guillermo del Toro: Actually, I think there were three Pinocchios.
Mark Gustafson: Yeah, one with Pauly Shore.
Guillermo del Toro: I think that any coincidence like that, or any convergence like that, it's okay. Because I think that it's a tale that can be told so many times in such different ways. And that's one of the reasons why I felt I was okay with the possessory credit because this is not only something that I've been carrying for almost two decades, but it also tells people, "Look, this is going to be of a piece with Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth." It's not a movie made for kids, but it is a movie that can be watched by the family. And he has a very sweet heart, as you saw in the footage, but it is something that is going to distinguish itself from the other versions of the tale. It has a point of view that is very, very specific. When you think like that, I mean, then you are in a joyful moment of coincidence, and you're never in competition.
Speaking of that difference, what was the motivation behind moving this Pinocchio to the time period, during the rise of Fascism and Mussolini in Italy?
Guillermo del Toro: I knew that it was a companion movie to Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth and I knew I wanted to talk about fatherhood. Fascism, for me, is a very masculine, paternalistic concern and one of the strands is that. It's not the strand but one of the strands - and if we did our job writing, it should rise and fall with the story. It should not dominate it. It shouldn't be part of the story. And I knew since I was a teenager, that if I tackled Pinocchio, it was going to be that way. I knew it. And I knew it in my 20s. I knew it in my 30s. And I knew it when we started this project.
And that was the first thing I said. I said, "If we're going to do it, we should do this and try to do a time when a lot of people behave like a puppet but not the puppet." Most of the Pinocchios are about obedience. Let's make ours about disobedience. Most of the Pinocchios are about changing. This life force that Pinocchio is, let's make that life force change everybody else. So these are things that switch the perspective and make the tale fresh. I think that if you do your job right, you will recognize the story.You recognize some story beats but the experience of immersing yourself in this world and traveling through the story should feel seamless, immersive, and very emotional. That is, in the best possible world, what should happen.
Pinocchio will begin streaming on Netflix this December.
