After more than a year of wishing with all its heart, the contemporary update of Pinocchio seems to have finally become a real project at last: Fox has hired Shawn Levy to direct a “Pinocchio prequel,” The Three Misfortunes Of Geppetto, thereby achieving the magical, fairy-dust-sprinkling number of three competing projects in development that’s required for any such reimagining to be taken seriously. Geppetto joins the previously reported Guillermo del Toro-produced, 3-D stop-motion-animated Pinocchio and the Bryan Fuller-scripted live-action version at Warner Bros.—a version that has now apparently come full circle from its Alice In Wonderland (and Alice In Wonderland’s box-office) inspirations by attracting the interest of Tim Burton, what with its built-in storyline, character design, and lack of need to think too hard about anything.
According to Deadline, Geppetto also bears similarities to another Burton film, Big Fish, telling a sweeping story of the woodcarver’s life as he survives war and other epic adventure in order to be with his true love—a romantic tale that’s only slightly sullied by the reminder that Geppetto eventually ends up poor, alone, and pretending that a marionette is his son. Anyway, Fox’s version seems to be angling to be the first Pinocchio project out of all Pinocchio projects, which means there will probably be at least two more announced any minute now.