Next Up: Pinocchio Wants To Be Real Boy! (aka Disney's Next Film on the Convert-to-Live-Action List Announced)

Yes - this is the next one. Announced Wednesday through Deadline:

Yet another live-action version of a tried-and-true Disney fairy tale is wending its way to the big screen. Peter Hedges is penning a feature loosely based on the original Pinocchio story about a marionette carved from wood who dreams of becoming a real boy. Pinocchio gets his wish but is prone to stretching the truth, and each time he does, his nose grows longer. 

And the script writer hired to make the animated classic transition to live action is Peter Hedges, who wrote the screenplays for The Odd Life of Timothy Green and About A Boy. Both films have the theme "what it means to be human" and focus on a familial-like relationship to a boy... (The phrase "typecast" seems to fit well when you're talking about a writer in this context.)

And the key phrase above is"loosely based". OK then. So everyone who loves the classic is going to be disappointed, but really if it is a direct translation, everyone who loves the classic will also be disappointed. This is no-win situation here. Hopefully they've come up with a very different (dare I say "fresh"?) approach to make a new Pinocchio instead of mashing/rehashing the old one.

I cannot imagine them going back to Collodi's serial though. Can you imagine? The film would be Not Recommended For Children at best! They might, though, look back over Walt's original notes and try some of those ideas.. forgetting, of course, that Walt didn't do those ideas for good reason.

At least we can be fairly certain that it will be better than Disney's last live action Pinocchio, and I don't mean the Once Upon A Time version. (Remember that? Don't worry - most don't.)

-sigh- Time to brush up those puppetry skills.

Hm. I wonder if The Henson Company will be getting in on the act