As reported by Deadline, Disney is developing a new version of Pinocchio with the help of About A Boy and Dan In Real Life writer Peter Hedges. However, unlike the Pinocchio movie that Disney released in 1940, this won’t be a cartoon. Instead, it will follow in the footsteps of—deep breath—Cinderella, Maleficent, The Jungle Book, Dumbo, Beauty And The Beast, Robin Hood, Mulan, and Winnie The Pooh by being a live-action take on one of Disney’s animated classics. As everyone surely knows, Pinocchio is the story of a wooden boy named Pinocchio who wants to be real and the Italian man who built him. Pinocchio’s nose gets bigger every time he lies, at some point he and some other kids get turned into donkeys, there’s a big whale, and then everything works out in the end. Honestly, we don’t remember Pinocchio all that well, so this live-action remake is actually coming at a good time.
Like everything these days, this isn’t the only Pinocchio movie in development. A few years ago, Fox was trying to make one that would’ve starred famous Italian man Robert Downey Jr. as Pinocchio’s dad. Guillermo del Toro was also working on one that was said to be a “darker” take on the story, because apparently not enough people have done that. We have a feeling neither of those projects will actually come out, though, since the former seems to have faded away and the latter is being made by Guillermo del Toro.
And now we patiently wait for Disney to announce live-action versions of Aladdin, Hercules, and The Little Mermaid.