I, for one, am not ready.
Yesterday, Deadline reported that Robert Zemeckis is officially and 100% on board to direct and co-write Disney’s live-action remake of Pinocchio, a story about a puppet who becomes a real boy, a vision so uncanny that of course Disney wants to make it with real actors. The film will be co-written with Chris Weitz, who worked on the screenplay for Rogue One as well as classics The Golden Compass (2007) and Antz.
Oscar-winner Zemeckis will be one of a long line of respected directors, including Guy Ritchie and Jon Favreau, to oversee one of Disney’s live-action self-adaptations. So far, Disney’s managed to make the Genie look pretty okay and has figured out the whole lion thing. But Pinocchio, a movie with both moving, nose-growing puppets and a talking cricket, might prove exceptionally tricky.
I’m particularly personally worried about that cricket. These movies, after all, hew toward realism. Just how realistic a cricket are we going to be looking at here? In my imagination, Jiminy Cricket isn’t a cricket at all. He’s just a tiny green man with a swell hat. Please, don’t take that from me, Disney. Robert, please, protect Jiminy.
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