It’s been just over three months since Disney announced that they will be halting the development and production of an array of films from their 2020 film slate. One of the more intriguing titles from the list was “Nightmare Alley,” which will be Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro’s follow up to “The Shape of Water.” In a recent interview with Indiewire’s Eric Kohn over Instagram Live, del Toro opened up about the current state of affairs of the suspended “Nightmare Alley,” as well as his stop-motion Netflix film “Pinocchio.”
Alongside gushing about the all-star cast of “Nightmare Alley” – which includes Bradley Cooper, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, and David Strathairn – Guillermo sadly recalled the day that the film’s production was shut down. “We stopped the shoot a week before [the industry shut down]. We reacted super fast, we proposed the studio to stop as opposed to being asked to stop. That saved us. Nobody to my knowledge in the cast or the crew got coronavirus. We were roughly 45 percent in. We were literally in the middle of a great scene. We went to lunch and talked to the studio and when we came back we said, ‘Everybody leave your tools and leave now.’’’
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Although the production is still on hold, del Toro explained that progress, albeit small, is still being made, as he is currently editing the picture remotely from his personal computer. Looking forward, del Toro explained that he hopes to begin shooting again in the fall, but he admits that things may never go back to normal because there has been a “spiritual change” throughout the world.
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Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” which will be a stop-motion animated-musical spin on the classic children’s story for Netflix, is slowly getting back into production. “Pinocchio” will feature the voices of Ewan McGregor, Ron Perlman, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, and others.
In his conversation with Indiewire, del Toro explained that “in stop-motion, you have many sets nearby one another in a warehouse-like space. You can have 10 sets in one space. We had to create a protocol where we now space the sets a certain number of feet. We created different shifts so no one is exposed. In this moment, security is paramount. Health, safety is the number one concert. We got to get used to it.”
It may be quite a while before either of these productions begin to operate at full capacity – especially after the newly implemented restrictions in California and in Los Angeles County, specifically. But, at least we have two star-studded Guillermo del Toro films waiting for us once the dust settles.