Disney’s live-actionPinocchiomovie is searching for a new director tonight, after filmmaker Sam Mendes backs out.Director Sam Mendes entered talksfor Pinocchio back in May, but nearly six months later, the filmmaker has exited the project, although no reason for his departure is given. There is no indication if the studio has any top contenders in mind to replace Sam Mendes, but this new report claims Disney shouldn’t have too hard a time finding a replacement, given the success of similar live-action adaptations in recent years.
Disney has been able to lure top-notch directorial talent into its stable with their growing slate of live-action adaptations, including Jon Favreau taking the helm on last year’s hitThe Jungle Book, and Bill Condon directing this year’sBeauty and the Beast, currently the highest-grossing movie of the year. DirectorTim Burton is currently shooting Dumbofor the studio and Guy Ritchie is prepping the studio’s live-action adaptation ofAladdin. Given how iconic thePinocchiocharacter is, it may not be long before the studio finds a new filmmaker to bring thisPinocchiolive-action project back to life.
We first reported on thisPinocchio live-action movieback in April 2015, with Disney bringing aboard Peter Hedges (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) to write the screenplay. The latest version of the script was written by Chris Weitz (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), who is also producing through his Depth of Field company. No story details have been given at this time, and it remains unclear if this new version will be faithful to the original source material, or any of the other adaptations spawned from it, of which there were many.
ThePinocchio storydates all the way back to Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novelThe Adventures of Pinocchio, following a boy made out of wood, who ultimately gets his wish to become a real human, but each time he tells a lie, his nose grows longer and longer. The Italian novel was first translated into English back in 1904, and there was also a 1911PinocchioItalian live-action short film that was the first adaptation of the character, and a 1939 Russian movie calledThe Golden Key, which employed a mixture of stop-motion animation and live-action. The Disney movie made several changes to the original story, with Pinocchio portrayed as more of a mischief-maker than a character with more nefarious intentions, as he was portrayed in the original book.
This news actually comes just a few days after we reported thatGuillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which was set up at The Jim Henson Company for years, is now officially dead. There was also a Warner Bros.Pinocchioproject that Robert Downey Jr. was planning on starring in, but there haven’t been any updates on that project for nearly two years, with a report from February 2016 stating that Ron Howard would direct, but there has been no indication that the project is still active.The Tracking Boardbroke the news on thisPinocchioproject earlier today.
