This story just hit Deadline:Hollywood today: Robert Zemeckis Closes Deal To Direct & Co-Write Disney’s ‘Pinocchio’ – Deadline It’s official. Oscar-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis is fully aboard Disney’s live-action remake of its animated classic Pinocchio. He’ll direct, and co-write the next draft with Chris Weitz for a possible year-end production start. Casting is still being determined. Zemeckis and Weitz will write off the previous draft that the latter penned with Simon Farnaby. The original 1940 Disney animated classic film ($85M lifetime domestic B.O. unadjusted for inflation) follows a wooden puppet, his father-creater Geppetto and the former’s quest to become a real boy. Andrew Miano and Weitz are producing Pinocchio through their Depth of Field label. Jack Rapke and Jackie Levine are executive producing. To me, this is yet another example of the brain-dead thinking at Disney where, since they can't come up with new ideas, they're going to redo the old ones until the well is empty. And I think they only have another dozen or so animated classics to plunder before that happens. I don't see how remaking a film like this in motion-capture live action is going to help or change the story at all.
It will probably be slurp but let's wish upon a star and maybe , just maybe , it will be fantastic. The potential is there :The Island of Lost Boys , the Whale , Jiminy Cricket ( and , please God , don't get Will Smith to do the voice of Jiminy Cricket )
Yeah, not really seeing a need for this film. There have already been several live action retellings of the 'Pinocchio' tale....the Henson collaboration one immediately comes to mind. The animated 'Pinocchio' film Uncle Walt and his staff made is a masterpiece in design, storytelling, and animation. It's doesn't need to be 're done' . Today's Disney really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Will the studio ever go out on a limb again and try something truly new or groundbreaking? That's the film I'm waiting to see. I am wondering, however.... The director, Bob Zemeckis. I was just reading a article the other night about him wanting Disney to make the 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' sequel with him and how a script exists. This is a project that has been on and off again for years and keeps getting brought up every once in a while in interviews. Now I have to wonder, is having Bob direct this 'Pinocchio' remake possibly part of a deal with Disney to move forward with that? Disney has done this before with director Brad Bird ....agree to do a film they want you to do and then they will let you do one YOU want to do as a director. Hmm... -
Hey if he makes it as weird and f'd up as Welcome to Marwen, I might be down. That was one of the best big studio WTF movies to come down the pike in some time...
Is this the same Pinocchio Robert Downey Jr. is talking about making soon or are we getting two adaptations at the same time?
A problem I see is with the number of versions of Pinocchio that have been recently released/will soon be released. Among them is a version by Roberto Benigni (who played Pinocchio in an earlier version and is playing Geppetto in this version) and that, based on the trailer, looks like it is going to be somewhat true to the original novel. Plus, I have two versions recently released on DVD. One is a live-ish version (while Pinocchio is done in CGI everything else seems to be basically live action), and the other is animated in a much more interesting style that I haven't seen that much (this version is much more true to the original story and includes elements from the original story that you usually don't see in other versions). Scanning Wikipedia, since 2000 there have been three movie versions of Pinocchio. This makes me wonder if this version will end up getting lost in the shuffle?
It was in the back of my mind that Downey could join forces with Bob Zemeckis, but Downey has spent a small fortune trying to develop this film for 10-15 years, paying writers out of his own pocket to come up with screenplays and so on, so it'd be tough to walk away from all that. I also think Zemeckis wants to call all the shots.
Could these people please stop doing remakes and instead make original films again? It's getting boring.
Is it going to be “live action” the way The Lion King was, with everything in the film done with photorealistic animation, or is will it be actual live action with a CGI Pinocchio?
How the mighty have fallen. A man who used to develop truly innovative trailblazing movies based on original ideas is now doing... this???
not gonna lie, this sounds hideous. always interesting when a director gets obsessed with tech maybe a little to the detriment of his films (kind of like James Cameron)....or maybe that's me wishing he could go back to making comedies like used cars when he's moved past that in his mind. oh well. hard pass on this one
