Get ready to get very sick of Pinocchio this year, because there are three adaptations hitting theaters and various streaming services before we call it curtains at the end of December. There’s an insanely-cheap-looking one that got pilloried on the internet a few months ago, there’s a Guillermo Del Toro animated film that’ll hit Netflix at some point, and there’s also Robert Zemeckis’ live-action take on the Disney movie that we’re all well familiar with. The House of Mouse dropped the first teaser for the project earlier on Tuesday, and, yeah, this looks kind of par for the course when it comes to Disney live-action remakes. At least Tom Hanks has experience with giving life to inanimate objects, given his work with Zemeckis in Cast Away all those years ago.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis, which, like a lot of Disney live-action remakes, is mainly trying to get you to realize that Hey! Famous people are in this! Seriously, we’re hitting the point where these things are basically like Grease Live or whatever musical revival broadcast is hitting the airwaves this week:
“Academy Award winner Robert Zemeckis directs this live action retelling of the beloved tale of a wooden puppet who embarks on a thrilling adventure to become a real boy. Tom Hanks stars as Geppetto, the wood carver who builds and treats Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as if he were his own son. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Jiminy Cricket, who serves as Pinocchio’s guide as well as his “conscience”; Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo is the Blue Fairy; Keegan-Michael Key is “Honest” John; Academy Award nominee Lorraine Bracco is Sofia the Seagull, a new character, and Luke Evans is The Coachman. Also in the cast are Kyanne Lamaya as Fabiana (and her marionette Sabina), Giuseppe Battiston as Señor Stromboli and Lewin Lloyd as Lampwick.”
Pinocchio hits Disney+ on September 8. You gotta wonder if Charlie Kaufman’s gonna get some sort of silly credit somewhere in here just so Zemeckis can give him (playful) payback for his brief “cameo” in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Maybe they’ll go the Alan Moore route and advertise a Kaufman-brand douche on the back of a wall or something.