Guillermo Del Toro To Direct Pinocchio, Revive Childhood Nightmares

I do what I want!

Apparently the Mexican director plans to direct all of my favorite books—literally, all of them. First there was the announcement that he was going to direct The
Hobbit. Then came the news that he would take on both Frankenstein and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, along with whispers that he wants to shoot H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. Now, I have received the glorious news that he will be directing a stop-motion version of Pinocchio.

For those who are only familiar with the stickily saccharine Disney version of the story, you’re in for a surprise. Carlo Collodi’s pitch-black parable of a devious little marionette is a subversive satire of 19th century Italian society. Though it was written for a children’s magazine, the serialized story features an aggressive and malicious young boy (not unlike his picaresque counterpart Tom Sawyer), whose folly and frivolity get him him into increasingly dire situations. We see little P smash the talking cricket during one of his tantrums, convincing the cops to arrest the unsuspecting Gepetto, and, in the story’s intended conclusion, the mischievous protagonist actually ends up hung to death. How’s that for a bedtime story?

Frankenhorror; Or, The Modern Monster

God is dead.

Modern horror was invented in the summer of 1816. Trapped inside on a rainy day, Lord Byron invited his disgruntled companions to each write a ghost story—a challenge that famously spawned Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and John William Polidori’s less well known The Vampyre, a predecessor to Dracula by more than 80 years. While it’s hard to imagine an uneducated teenage girl and a 21-year-old physician out-writing two of the great Romantic poets (Percy Shelley was also at the scene), the event has become so widely mythologized that it’s difficult to determine who actually wrote what.

The Vampyre was almost immediately met with attribution confusion. The story was published in New Monthly Magazine in 1819 without Polidori’s permission, and, much to his and Byron’s irritation, was falsely advertised as a new work by the famous poet. The credit was later amended, but the issue only hints at the authorial skepticism Frankenstein also met—a debate that continues to this day.

Chronicle Review‘s current article “The Birth of Frankenstein” analyzes the disputed parentage of Frankenstein—a scandalous affair practically fit for Jerry Springer. While the debate leans in favor of Mary, Chronicle‘s comprehensive account walks through the various points of view regarding the story’s evolution.