Back in February, we learned that Ewan McGregor was one of the A-list actors joining the upcoming stop-motion animation version of “Pinocchio” from filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. However, at the time, it wasn’t clear which role the actor would voice. Now, thanks to a recent interview with ACE Comic-Con, McGregor revealed that he would in fact play the wise partner to the young wooden boy, Jiminy Cricket.
In fact, not only is he going to voice the famous cricket, the actor explained that even before COVID-19 hit, he had already done a good deal of work on “Pinocchio.”
“That I had started working on before I left for New York. So some of that is recorded,” said McGregor. “And of course, it’s stop-frame animation, so it’s going to take them a great long time to make that film. But my first part of that, which is recording his dialogue, is sorta done. There may or may not be a song that needs to be recorded. I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss that.”
When it was revealed that McGregor was joining the cast of the animated Netflix project, names such as Ron Perlman, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, and David Bradley were also revealed as part of the film. However, we still aren’t sure which actor will be in which role.
As McGregor confirmed, even though he’s already recorded some dialogue for the feature, the fact that it’s stop-motion animation means that the production time on “Pinocchio” will likely be a long time, with no clear release date in mind. And before he can focus all of his energy on the animated film, del Toro has to finish work on “Nightmare Alley,” his live-action film that is currently in production and was one of the features with filming stopped due to the pandemic.