Live-Action PINOCCHIO Adaptation Moves Forward at Disney

If you're sick of all of Disney's announcements that they're developing more live-action adaptations of their animated classics, I'd suggest avoiding the internet for the next few years. Thanks to Cinderella's success (the film just crossed $400 million worldwide), the studio is fully embracing their back catalog in the hopes of cashing in on those properties again. According to Deadline, studio head Alan Horn has put an adaptation of Pinocchio into development, with Peter Hedges (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, About A Boy, Dan in Real Life) set to write a script that's apparently "loosely based" on the original story.

There have been a bunch of adaptations of Pinocchio in the years since the 1940 Disney animated film, including an infamous live-action version directed by Roberto Benigni back in 2002. Guillermo del Toro has been working on getting his own stop-motion version off the ground since at least 2009, but that hasn't happened yet, so it looks like the Disney machine will likely beat him to the punch since he'll be busy with Pacific Rim sequels for the next few years.

Over the past few months, Disney has announced a ton of these kinds of adaptations — Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book, Dumbo, Winnie the Pooh, and Mulan — but I'm guessing they won't all see the inside of theaters. Because of the frequency of these announcements, I'd wager that the studio just wants as many of these projects in the works as possible so they can pick and choose which they like best and discard the other ones (temporarily, at least). I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Are you interested in seeing a live-action Pinocchio movie?