There’s definitely been a bit of a ‘me too’ attitude at Warner Bros. recently, with the studio developing projects based on The Three Musketeers, Oz and other classic properties, after others have already said they’re putting together projects about the same thing. Now comes news, via Variety, that they want to make a live-action Pinocchio movie, even though Guilermo Del Toro has long been developing a flick based on the wooden boy who comes to life.
However, while Del Toro has described his film as fairly dark, this sounds more family friendly, with producer Dan Jinks telling Variety that he was inspired by Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland and that, “I think we’ve found a fresh approach that’s going to be very entertaining.”
Bryan Fuller, best known as a TV writer and producer on series such as Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies and Heroes, has been hired to write the screenplay, based on Carlo Collodi 1883 book, ‘The Adventures Of Pinocchio’.
However you might have thought Warner would want to avoid Pinocchio, as in the early 1990s Francis Ford Copolla tried setting up a live action version of the tale at Warner, and ending up suing the studio when the project was put into turnaround and he was prevented from setting it back up at Columbia. Copolla was eventually awarded $20 million. Hopefully the studio will have better furtunes this time around.