Guillermo Del Toro is one of those individuals that sprinkles gold dust on nearly everything he does. The director has brought us some of the more chilling, fantastical, and beautifully told stories of the last few decades and his recent addition to his long list of achievements has been met with equal enthusiasm.
The Mexican director’s recent stop-motion adaption of Pinocchio received a huge standing ovation at the Animation is Film Festival in L.A. The film has a stellar cast with the likes of Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Finn Wolfhard, Ron Perlman, and Christoph Waltz voicing the characters, but at the event, Del Toro also added that the animators themselves are just as much actors as actors are.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Del Toro spoke at the event discussing how he treated the puppet’s animators.
“I promised, you are going to be the actors, this is what we want. But if the puppet tells you something different, do it. There is no other form of animation where the bond (between animator and character) is so close.”
He added that he had hopes that “maybe 30 minutes into the movie, people will think ‘this is a good actor — not a puppet.'”
The film isn’t just doing well at the festival though but has also received a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, absolutely trouncing the latest snooze fest Disney live-action adaption that came out earlier this year. The score comes off the back of 17 critic reviews that praise the director for his craft and devotion, calling the film “a mature, heartbreaking, beautiful take on the classic fairytale.”
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio will be released in limited theaters in November before finding its way to Netflix on Dec. 9.