Oscar award winning director Guillermo Del Toro has been working on a stop-motion animated version of Pinocchio for almost a decade. According to Del Toro,“no art form has influenced [his] life and [his] work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to [him] as Pinocchio.”

Stop-motion is a type of animation that requires the physical manipulation of objects in small increments in between every frame to give the appearance that it‘s moving. The movie will be a darker version of the Disney adaption and closer to its original story that was written in 1881.

The original serialized story of Pinocchio was written by Italian author Carlo Collodi and called “The Adventures of Pinocchio.” In the first part of the series the wooden doll actually dies a gruesome death and is hung by bandits. Due to its popularity the editor asked Collodi to add additional chapters and make it more suitable for children. In the second half of the series Collodi included a fairy that rescues Pinocchio and turns him into a real boy.

The story was then released as a single book and besides religious works is the most translated book in the world. The new adaptation became a passion project for Del Toro and in 2018 it was picked up by Netflix. Del Toro expressed his delight in a statement and said “After years of pursuing this dream project, I found my perfect partner in Netflix.” Del Toro continued, “In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father who gets lost in a world he cannot comprehend. He embarks on an extraordinary journey that leaves him with a deep understanding of his father and the real world. I’ve wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember.”

The script was written by Del Toro and Patrick McHale and animation director Mark Gustagon will also be directing. Netflix has not announced a release date for “Pinocchio” and it is still unknown if it will hit theaters first. In the meantime check out the the star studded cast:

Gregory Mann:
Playing the starring role of Pinocchio will be Mann. Mann is an upcoming actor who was a part of the 2019 film “Cats.“

Ewan McGregor:
McGregor will play who we know as Jiminy Cricket. Except in the adaptation “Jiminy’ is losing his first name and is hereby known as “Cricket.”

David Bradley:
Bradley played Argus Filch in Harry Potter and is making a big comeback playing the role of Geppetto.

Their roles are unknown but Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, Finn Wolfhard, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, John Turturro, Ron Perlman were also announced as a part of the cast.