Gris Grimly Talks Bringing Pinocchio to Life

Steve Barton |

Feb 23, 2011

Dread Central favorite Gris Grimly has taken the time to speak a bit about the genesis and the current state of his upcoming stop-motion telling of Pinocchio that he’s making in conjunction with Mark Gustafson and Guillermo del Toro, and it’s great to hear from the man himself.

For the full story of just how this several years in the making project came to be, check out Gris’ Blog here. Excerpts are below. Dig it!

“Less than a week ago, Guillermo Del Toro announced to Deadline that we are taking Pinocchio out to the studios,” writes Grimly. “Since then, this news has begun to unwind like a jiving mummy on the dance floor. Film sites including horror, geek and general Hollywood enthusiast websites have done spin-offs from the original article. The problem is that much of the information is becoming misleading, confusing and misconstrued.”

Adding, “I came up with the idea to make Pinocchio into a stop motion film about seven or eight years ago. A group of friends and I started to put together a little development to present the idea to studios. At the time I had no interest in directing and one of my choices was to ask Guillermo Del Toro if he would be interested.

As fate would have it, I received a call from a gallery that was selling artwork from my Pinocchio book. They relayed to me that Guillermo Del Toro was just in the gallery and purchased a piece of Pinocchio art. I said “You have to be kidding me! Can you set up a lunch with him?” They did. And in a couple days I was eating giant shrimp the size of rats (heads and all) across from GDT while presenting him my film.

GDT has been like a big brother and mentor on this project,” says Grimly. “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for him. Many young filmmakers would kill for the opportunity that I’ve been granted. Maybe they deserve it more. I never went to film school. I haven’t worked my way up from the mail room. I haven’t invested a lot of time and money into film projects and festivals in hopes to be discovered. I am just a man with a vision and the work ethics to make it happen. Fate has been on my side and in the interest of Pinocchio. I threw the die…and they landed in my favor.”

Click on the above link to read the entire truly amazing story!