Every once in a while, strange coincidences happen in the world of cinema. This year, the classic fairytale ‘Pinocchio’, seems to have captured the imaginations of multiple filmmakers. And, by the end of 2022, three different movie interpretations of the 141-year-old story will have been released. Will you watch them all?
Everyone knows the classic story: carpenter makes wooden boy, wooden boy comes to life, carpenter names him Pinocchio, Pinocchio’s nose grows…for some reason. However, most people will be more familiar with the 1940 Disney animated version, inspired by Carlo Collodi’s original novel ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’.
The First Pinocchio Movie Of 2022
At the beginning of this year, Lionsgate introduced their new interpretation of the children’s tale, titled ‘Pinocchio: A True Story’. Originally a Russian production, the filmmaker Vasiliy Rovensky directed the film. Unfortunately, after the English trailer dropped, it quickly became a meme. In February, Tiktok creators started a trend using an audio clip from the movie, implying the voice of the wooden boy sounded, well, a little wooden. And also a bit ‘camp’?
‘Pinocchio: A True Story’ went straight to DVD in both the U.S and U.K, in March.
Another Disney Remake
It seems like since the release of the live-action Cinderella film in 2015, Disney have been pretty consistently making modern versions of their classics. Knowing that these shiny new revamps of old favorites are almost guaranteed to be box office successes, it’s unlikely that Disney will stop producing them anytime soon.
The upcoming Disney Plus original ‘Pinocchio’, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks as the carpenter ‘Gepetto,’ will surely be no exception to that. The movie, which will feature a mixture of live-action and CGI cinematography, had a budget alone of 35 million dollars. Although, as you will later see, the Disney film has some pretty big competition to face.
‘Pinocchio’ (2022) will arrive on Disney Plus on the 8th of September.
Netflix Joins The ‘Pinocchio’ Club
The final Pinocchio adaptation of 2022 is arguably the most intriguing of the three. Directed by the award-winning mind behind ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘The Shape of Water’, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio promises to have a unique take on the familiar story, and will no doubt include some darker themes.
The first stop motion project of Del Toro’s career, the film was originally announced in 2008, however, due to several complications, its production was delayed. When Netflix Animation finally acquired the project in 2018, the film was picked up once again, coincidentally aligning with the production of the new Disney version.
‘Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio’ is set to be released on Netflix this December.
Too Much Of A Wood Thing?
Although the release of three different Pinocchio movies in one year is undoubtedly a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, similar coincidences have also happened in previous years. Cast your mind back, for instance, to 1998, when Dreamworks’s ‘Antz’ and Pixar’s ‘A Bug’s Life’ both competed for a place on the big screen.
However, with the sheer abundance of remakes and sequels being produced in recent years, did anyone actually need three new Pinocchio movies? Or even one, for that matter?
