For his first animated feature, Guillermo del Toro turned to a story that had inspired him since childhood. The Mexican filmmaker and his co-director Mark Gustafson tell Screen about Pinocchio's eventful 15-year journey to the screen.
How many days did it take to make the new Pinocchio?
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, on the other hand, took a whopping 940 days to capture. That's roughly two and a half years — enough time for titular puppet performer Gregory Mann's voice to crack.
The film begins during World War I, circa 1917/1918, in which Carlo, Geppetto's son, is killed when a rocket is dropped on the church in their small village. Though it's unclear how many years pass after that, Pinocchio's main story is set in the intervening years, likely in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
As for Pinocchio, this version takes inspiration from the original 1883 story by Italian writer Carlo Collodi, with the setting transposed to the 1930s against the backdrop of the rise of Italian fascism. It's among the Top 10 most watched shows on Netflix.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio | Behind the Craft | Netflix
Why did it take 15 years to make Pinocchio?
The movie required over 1 000 days of filming. It uses the painstaking method of stop-motion animation, in which puppets are carefully manipulated frame-by-frame to create the illusion of movement.
How a real boy was made: Walt Disney's 1940 classic Pinocchio took two years to make and required more than 750 artists and technicians to bring the animated characters to life… as new image reveals Tom Hanks' role in new production.
Geppetto has a tragic backstory that's only hinted at in the remake. In the remake, we learn that Geppetto had an unnamed son who died. Though we never learn the backstory, it helps explain that Geppetto is channeling some of his grief for his dead child into his work as a woodcarver by building Pinocchio.
Collodi often used the Italian Tuscan dialect in his book. The name Pinocchio is possibly derived from the rare Tuscan form pinocchio (“pine nut”) or constructed from pino (“pine tree, pine wood”) and occhio ("eye").
A poor man named Geppetto wants to carve himself a marionette in order to make a living as a puppeteer. He is given a piece of enchanted wood, and as soon as Geppetto carves the puppet, which he names Pinocchio, it begins abusing the old man.
Discusses the phenomenon of client dishonesty (the Pinocchio syndrome). By consciously negating, concealing, or reframing conflicting ideas and emotions, the client escapes the exploration and the resulting awareness of unpleasant facts, painful realities, or prescribed wishes.
The Oscar-nominated film was made using stop-motion alongside some groundbreaking new techniques. The Movies Insider team breaks down how the film achieved its lifelike look. Watch all episodes of Movies Insider here.
How much time did it take to make Pinocchio Guillermo del Toro?
“Everything Happens When It Needs To”: Guillermo del Toro On How His Pinocchio Took 14 Years To Make (EXCLUSIVE) Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is out today on Netflix, and it's fair to say that this new version of Carlo Collodi's story is some of the director's finest work.
Pinocchio is a supporting hero in the Shrek film franchise. He is one of Shrek and Donkey's best friends who used to be owned by his wood carving owner, Geppeto but his father gave him away to the banished fairy tale creatures who were forced to live in Shrek's swamp.
The overriding theme for del Toro is the unfairness of children being bossed about by adults. In Collodi's novel, Pinocchio is punished every time he is disobedient, and ultimately learns to do what he is told.
After the wooden boy falls into the water the coachman, voiced by Luke Evans, says: “B****cks. Wooden donkey would have been worth a bleeding fortune.” Ofcom have ruled the word as ”medium offensive".
In this telling, the aging Italian woodcarver Geppetto has a young son who's killed by a falling missile during World War I. Many years later, Geppetto, still distraught, chops down a pine tree in a drunken rage and carves a little puppet boy out of it, as if he could somehow bring his son back.
What happened to Geppetto's wife and son in Pinocchio?
[Pinocchio] Geppetto had a wife and child but they died before the events of the movie. It would explain why Geppetto is so sad and also why he wants a child. We got several direct clues to this. Most of these clues are seen in his work.
Tom Hanks played Gepetto in the 2022 live-action adaptation of the animated film, which was directed by Robert Zemeckis. In this film, Gepetto made Pinocchio in the memory of his late son and the clocks he carves in his shop are mementos to his late wife.
In 1937, Walt Disney Animation Studios released its first fully animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, pioneering a new form of family entertainment.
The film cost $2.6 million in 1940, but using the same techniques and processes, it would cost well over $100 million today. Pinocchio was re-released theatrically in 1945, 1954, 1962, 1971, 1978, and 1984.
