Casting details about Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming stop-motion animated adaptation of “Pinocchio” are finally beginning to slip out, or at least one detail anyway. In an interview posted Monday, Ewan McGregor told Ace Universe that he’ll be voicing Jiminy Cricket in the film.
In the clip, which you can watch at the bottom of the page, McGregor says, straight up, “I’m playing Jiminy Cricket in Guillermo del Toro’s version of ‘Pinocchio,’” and that he began work on the film before the coronavirus pandemic shut down film production over most of the world.
“So some of that is recorded,” he said. “And of course, it’s stop-frame animation so it’s going to take them a great long time to make that film. But my first part of that, which is recording his dialogue, is sort of done. There may or may not be a song that needs to be recorded. I’m not sure that I’m at liberty to discuss that.”
Netflix didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap, but this feels pretty official in our opinion.
Set to launch in 2021 on Netflix, “Pinocchio” will be del Toro’s first animated feature film as a director. He’ll also write and produce the project, a musical set in fascist Italy during the 1930s.
The film is an expansion of Netflix’s existing relationship with Guillermo del Toro, who created their Emmy award-winning television series DreamWorks’ “Trollhunters,” the first installment of the DreamWorks’ “Tales of Arcadia” trilogy. He is also the creator of the upcoming Netflix series, “Guillermo del Toro Presents 10 After Midnight.”