There are more than a few live-action fairy tale re-imaginings brewing inside the Hollywood system right now, but Robert Downey Jr‘s long-gesturing new take on Pinocchio just got a lot more clout. He roped in Paul Thomas Anderson to pen the fairy tale’s screenplay. There’s also a solid chance the filmmaker will take this on as his next directorial project.
This project becomes the next step in the celebrity’s longstanding friendship. The two of them have looked to work together for some time, and almost got the chance when Downey signed on to play the lead in Anderson’s latest, last year’s Inherent Vice, before the actor had to drop out due to pesky Avengers: Age of Ultron obligations. Downey is slated to produce this new movie with his wife, Susan, for Team Downey and alongside Dan Jinks, so there’s little chance of this one slipping from their collective cracks, unless Anderson were to drop out.
Pinocchio returns Anderson with Warner Bros after they produced and distributed his last movie. The studio also recently distributed the Downey’s last producing project, The Judge. This has been a passion project for Downey for years, with the actor at different points grabbing his Tropic Thunder director Tim Burton to helm to no avail. Anderson writes the screenplay based on Michael Mitnick‘s (The Giver) past draft, working from screenplays by Bryan Fuller (“Hannibal“) and Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass) before him based on Carlo Collodi‘s novel.
This is one of two Pinocchio adaptations in the works right now, as Disney announced back in Mulan and Winnie the Pooh, just to literally name a few.
Anderson is typically known for his heavier fare, but in interviews in the past he’s expressed his love of lighter, more family-friendly features, and even Inherent Vice was considerably lighter in tone than most of the movies he makes. PTA is my favorite director of all-time, so I’ll follow him anywhere and I’d love to see him do something different than he does before, especially if it turns out to be good. There were rumblings of him joining Quentin Tarantino in the THR]
