Watch: Ewan McGregor Voices Mr. Cricket In New Teaser For Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio Coming Later This Year On Netflix

Academy Award winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is making his animated feature film directorial debut at Netflix with his lifelong passion project, Pinocchio, which he will also write and produce as a stop motion musical. Pinocchio will be del Toro’s first feature film since The Shape of Water, which garnered four Academy Awards last year, including for Best Director and Best Picture.

Del Toro has set his retelling of the classic tale of Pinocchio in Italy during the 1930s. This marks an expansion of Netflix’s existing relationship with Guillermo del Toro, who created their Emmy award-winning television series DreamWorks’ Trollhunters, the first installment of the DreamWorks’ Tales of Arcadia trilogy. The next chapter, 3Below, is set to debut on December 21, 2018, followed by Wizards in 2019. He is also the creator of the upcoming Netflix series, Guillermo del Toro Presents 10 After Midnight.

Pinocchio is a production of Guillermo del Toro, The Jim Henson Company (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance), and ShadowMachine (Bojack Horseman, The Shivering Truth), which will house the stop-motion animation production. Alongside del Toro, Lisa Henson, ShadowMachine’s Alex Bulkley, Corey Campodonico, and Gary Ungar of Exile Entertainment will produce. Blanca Lista will co-produce. Also alongside del Toro, Patrick McHale (Over The Garden Wall, Adventure Time) will co-write the script, Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox) will co-direct, and Guy Davis will serve as co-production designer, taking inspiration from Gris Grimly’s original design for the Pinocchio character. The film’s puppets will be built by Mackinnon and Saunders (Corpse Bride). Netflix expects production on Pinocchio began fall 2021

The cast is stacked, featuring Ewan McGregor as Jimminy Cricket, David Bradley as Gepetto, Ron Perlman, Tilda Swinton (The French Dispatch), Christoph Waltz (No Time to Die), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), Cate Blanchett (Mrs. America), John Turturro (The Batman), Tim Blake Nelson ( Watchmen) and Burn Gorman (Pacific Rim). Pinocchio is coming December 9th 2022.