Movies
SD Comic-Con ’10: Guillermo Del Toro Activity Developing ‘Pinocchio’!
I;m not quite sure Guillermo del Toro will even make it to retirement. The beloved director from Mexico is not only close to directing The Hobbit, but he recently completed producing Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and is hard at work developing both Frankenstein and At the Mountains of Madness. We broke the news back in November of 2008 that Del Toro is getting behind a creepy new version of Pinocchio, which will put popular artist Gris Grimly behind the camera. He confirmed to IGN at the Comic-Con that the project is quite active: “I will tell you what is a fact,” said del Toro. “We are actively developing, in pre-production, a really strange [version of] Pinocchio — stop-motion animated, by Gris Grimly, with music by [Australian musician] Nick Cave. It is a very beautiful version of Pinocchio as it was envisioned by Carlo Collodi.” See what he had to say about it back in 2008.
“In Grimly’s version of PINOCCHIO, once there was a lonely woodcutter named Geppetto-who dreamed of having a boy of his own. So one day he carved a boy out of wood and named him Pinocchio.When the puppet comes to life, it’s Geppetto’s dream come true.Except Pinocchio turns out to be not such a nice boy after all. Pinocchio enjoys nothing better than creating mischief and playing mean tricks. As he discovers, being bad is much more fun than being good. For a while, anyway. Happily for Pinocchio, he will learn that there is much more to being a real boy than having fun.”
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallis.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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