The live-action Pinocchio coming to Disney Plus on September 8 has a new full-length trailer. The Disney movie, which is not to be confused with Guillermo del Toro’s stop-motion animated movie coming to Netflix, stars Tom Hanks as Geppetto.
The live-action cast is rounded out by Cynthia Erivo, who plays the Blue Fairy. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth voices Pinocchio, Keegan-Michael Key voices Honest John (the wily fox), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt voices Jiminy Cricket. Most importantly, the trailer gives us a glimpse of Cleo the goldfish, and Figaro the black-and-white cat.
Pinocchio is just the latest in a whole spate of hugely successful live-action Disney movies. They show no sign of stopping, which is understandable because Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019), and The Lion King (2019) all made over over a billion dollars each. We have live-action versions of Snow White, The Little Mermaid and more still to come. For some reason, we’re getting a whole series of Pinocchio adaptations within a year – there’s also the horrifying Lionsgate version and hopefully much better (but of course, darker) GDT version. These three follow a 2019 version starring Oscar-winner Roberto Benigni. Four Pinocchios?! In this economy?!
The trailer hits all of the familiar beats – The Blue Fairy bringing Pinocchio to life, and Geppetto dancing with joy before promptly sending him off to school all on his own. Pinocchio gets waylaid by Honest John and taken in by Stromboli – who enslaves him as an entertainer. The end of the trailer shows the spectacular whale (who unlike most whales, has some scary-looking teeth) that Pinocchio and Geppetto end up inside.
Given the afore-mentioned box office success of the live-action Disney movies, it’s somewhat surprising that Pinocchio isn’t getting a theatrical release, but is going straight to Disney Plus. It seems likely that The Little Mermaid starring Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy, and Snow White starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot will though.
Check out our guide to the best Disney Plus movies.