Tom Hanks makes a wish in first teaser for Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio
Disney's latest live-action adaptation also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cynthia Erivo, Keegan Michael Key, and more
Aux News Pinocchio
Fresh off that baffling Elvis accent, Tom Hanks is back with a role far less abrasive and way more in keeping with his “America’s Dad” persona: Geppetto in Pinocchio. On Tuesday, Disney released the first teaser for the latest live-action adaptation of one of its beloved animated classics.
We don’t get to see any of Pinocchio being a real boy in this trailer–in fact, we don’t see much of Pinocchio at all, beyond a wooden hand and a brief glimpse of his famous nose. The teaser does feature a good bit of action from Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who runs, jumps, slides, and umbrella-glides his way around town.
The teaser also offers a tantalizing glimpse of Cynthia Erivo as the Blue Fairy, granting wishes–and life–to the wooden puppet. You can also hear a bit of her rendition of Disney’s signature standard, “When You Wish Upon A Star.”
Disney’s new take on the fairytale (originally written by Carlo Collodi) is not to be confused with any of the others going around, including Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Netflix retelling or the unexpectedly viral Pauly Shore version. This version also stars Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as the voice of Pinocchio, alongside Keegan-Michael Key, Lorraine Bracco, Luke Evans (who, after also starring in Beauty And The Beast, must not be suffering live-action fatigue like the rest of us).
Pinocchio sees Hanks once again teaming up with Robert Zemeckis (of Back To The Future fame), with whom he collaborated on Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express. We have to imagine this story is also pretty familiar territory for the actor, as someone who has played both Walt Disney as well as a doll that comes to life for the same studio. Between that and Zemeckis, we’d say Pinocchio falls squarely in Hanks’ comfort zone.
39 Comments
Here come the extreme righties. A black fairy is forced diversity! It’s woke! WAAAAH!!!
When you become just as annoying and cliché as what you’re hating on.
What’s “unexpected” about Pauly Shore having a virus?
That he hasn’t already died from one.
Geppedo: The story of a doll that comes to life and, well, you can imagine where it goes from there.
He fixes the cable?
Don’t be fatuous, Geppy.
Nope, didn’t need this
“A part of you grows when you lie.”
“My nose?”
“Uhhhhhhh…”
Disney Presents
The Timeless Classic…I would have said, “1940’s most nightmare-inducing body horror…. now rendered in 4k CGI!”
My vague memories of watching Pinnochio as a little kid involve my older brothers laughing while I felt really unsettled. I guess it’s a generational thing (sort of like how my brothers could sit all the way through Scrooged). I was actually a bigger fan of Pinnochio and the Emperor of the Night, a 1987 Filmation movie released by New World Pictures that I can’t remember but, based on that pedigree, must have been a masterpiece.
Thought I was the only who had seen Pinnochio and the Emperor of the Night. None of my cousins remember watching it.
Also worth noting that Hanks and Zemeckis made polar express. Crossing my fingers for some uncanny valley “real boy”
And, similarly to how The Lion King lost something with expressive faces, it won’t be near as good
Hanks and Zemeckis know they don’t have to do this, right?
That piece of flayed Mouseketeer skin bearing a contract written in eldritch runes and Tom and Rob’s signatures in their own blood locked in the Disney Vault™ says otherwise.
Is Pinocchio going to be all CGI? This could be cool and actually halfway worth making if it involved real puppetry.
They could of make it staring The Muppets. Kermit could play Geppeto and Miss Piggy or Janis can play the blue fairy. They can make a new puppet to play Pinocchio.
Or Scooter in the starring role.Or get weird and give the role to Gonzo.
Uncle Deadly can play Geppetto or maybe Waldorf and Statler.
Pair him with Crazy Harry and you’ve got the new S & W.
I mean, I don’t begrudge Disney remaking their past IPs, but usually with some kind of a new spin on them. Here, they haven’t even redesigned Pinnochio. It feels so rote and slavish to the original, that casting Erivo as the Blue Fairy feels like like an attempt at something new, than it is Disney trying to score points by resorting to tokenism.
Disney’s idea of putting a new spin on old IP’s is making all their classic villains sympathetic and tragic origin stories. Otherwise, they’re soulless, beat for beat, remakes like The Lion King.We need more movies like Something Wicked this Way Comes or The Black Hole. These were like the Goosebumps of its day.
God that Black Hole scared the crap out of me. And people forget how dark Classic Disney can be. Now, if I were tasked with remaking/reimagining a Disney IP, I’d tell Pinocchio from the perspective of Lampwick. I always wondered about him. Does he have parents? Did he have the same magical people looking out for him? His fate seems so unfair, and I always imagined that maybe he’d find his own road to redemption after the events at Pleasure Island.
Also “The Watcher in the Woods” (1980). A straight up Disney horror movie! Not even hiding behind another label like their later “Touchstone” substudio.
Damn! Nice pick.
my nephews and nieces still prefer watching the animated versions. I know these live actions are successful when they are released though but I’m curious which version gets more streams in the long run.
Cruella knew it was campy and silly in its retelling at least, and I would have been obsessed as a baby teen queer.
I genuinely wonder if these new movies have any fans past the opening weekend, if there is going to be a generation of kids who will grow up loving and remembering all the fun they had watching the CGI Lion King on an iPad, all the great carbon-copy songs and memorable dead-eyed characters. Or if it will just be consigned to the same digital trash bin as so much disposable “content” these days. I suspect they’ll hold tighter, nostalgically-speaking, to the YouTubers that screamed memes in their faces during 10-hour video game streams, or the pretty popular girls who lifelessly taught them dance moves on TikTok.
They should think about remaking flawed movies like The Black Cauldron into a series.
Yeah, they’re not going to be improving on anything from the original Pinnochio. Might as well take something that didn’t work the first time and try to make something better out of it.
+1. They could take that entire Lloyd Alexander series and do it properly and there would be very few “purist” fans out there to raise a fuss.
That’s what Tarantino said about why Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 works: “Don’t remake good movies. The original Oceans was fuckin’ shit” or something like that.
Beloved Italian actor Tom Hanks is spot on casting for Geppetto, no chance of any backlash there…
“You’re telling me that you made an Italian toy maker out of a Delorean? I mean, out of Tom Hanks?”
I’m here for it if he-a put on-a fake-a Italiano-a accent.a.
This trailer looks like a fake trailer you’d see in a movie like The Player.
The Player fucking rules
Jiminy Cricket’s head looks like a green, stitched leather Gimp suit.
Nothing about this trailer has changed my view that all these Disney live-action “brand deposit” remakes are complete wastes of time.
I’d be shocked if Zimmecks (who I’m increasingly losing faith in, by the movie) could deliver a Monstro as good as the original. The ebb and flow of escaping the whale is up there with Fantasia for me as some of Disney’s finest combination of animation and sound.