Stop-motion take on ‘Pinocchio’ will be ‘particularly beautiful’ — Director

GUILLERMO del Toro has promised that his stop-motion take on ‘Pinocchio’ will be “particularly beautiful”. The 57year-old director is helming a new adaptation of the classic story and is embracing the “imperfections” of stop-motion content.

In a behind-the-scenes video for Netflix, Del Toro said: “To me, there’s a valuable difference between stop-motion as an art form and digital.

“Stop-motion in the early days where you had the flicker of fur and fabric, even the atmospheric dust on the sets – and the imperfection of it was totally gorgeous to look at because it told you how the thing was done.”

The ‘Hellboy’ director said: “I really wanted this movie to land in a way that had the expressiveness and the material nature of a handmade piece of animation – an artisanal, beautiful exercise and carving, painting, sculpting, but it had the sophistication of movement that research on rigs and puppetry-making has taken us. “Pinocchio has lived through the centuries, a fable very close to my heart. We are very sure that this incarnation is particularly beautiful.”

The film is slated for release in December and will feature the voices of Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz and Tilda Swinton with Del Toro previously revealing that he is left an emotional wreck whenever he watches the film.

He said: “Obviously in animation, you get to see the movie in storyboards beginning to end many many times, and then you add the stop-motion. Right now we are 50 per cent animated and 50 per cent in storyboards.

“Every time I watch the movie I just sob like a baby.” Del Torohas promised that the flick will be different from any other version of the classic Italian tale.

He said: “It’s unlike any version of the story you’ve ever seen. It’s completely unlike it. It subverts the moral underpinnings of the original fable, which is, in order to be a real boy you have to change. You’re going to become flesh and blood. This is about becoming a real boy by acting... acting like a real human, period.”