As you regular readers probably know by now, we like Guillermo del Toro a great deal, and are always curious as to what he’s up to.
He’s always got a lot of irons in the fire, yet he’s also had a lot of problems getting projects off the ground, which is why he has his fingers in so many pies. Among many projects del Toro’s been attached to, you may recall that way, way back he was going to take over The Hobbit from Peter Jackson.
Guillermo was also going to make his dream project, At the Mountains of Madness at Universal, but it proved too expensive, and he’s also still got remakes of Frankenstein, and his own version of The Haunted Mansion ride for the big screen, which I think would actually be pretty cool.
So what’s next? A 3D remake of Pinocchio, of course!
As Collider informs us, this is going to be done in stop-motion, and he will be co-directing with Mark Gustafson, who was the animation director of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This will be a somewhat modernized version of the story, taking place between World War I and II. As del Toro told Variety, “It was when everyone was behaving like a puppet, except for puppets.”
Guillermo has also been spending a lot of time helping out on animated films such as Megamind, Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda 1, and Rise of the Guardians, so clearly all this has rubbed off him.
And as you’ve probably guessed by now, there’s a competing Pinocchio movie that Tim Burton wants to direct with Robert Downey Jr. starring as Gepetto. Whichever one gets made first, if either one gets made, del Toro will finally be back in the theaters with his big sci-fi epic Pacific Rim on July 12, 2013.
