Speaking in an interview with The Telegraph, del Toro revealed he is already working on a new stop-motion animated film: an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Buried Giant.” To co-write the script, del Toro has tapped “Matilda: The Musical” scribe Dennis Kelly.
“We start the design process in two months,” teased del Toro, who also said he chose the project in order to keep pushing the medium of animation. “Animation has given us so many indelible images over the years, but in many ways the industry wants to keep it at the children’s table. So I want to keep pushing the medium into areas that demonstrate its capacity.”
Now, for the uninitiated, “The Buried Giant” is a 2015 novel that follows an elderly couple living in post-Arthurian Britain. They set out to visit their son, whom they haven’t seen in years. The problem is that mass amnesia spreads through the land and the couple can’t remember much about their son, so they venture out with a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and an illustrious knight in order to find their missing son, while they all slowly begin to remember their dark and troubled shared past.
This not only sounds incredible but a bit familiar, too. That’s because “The Buried Giant” was named as part of an (unfortunately) long list of unmade projects by del Toro, which also included “Justice League Dark,” “Fantastic Voyage,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and much, much more.
Hopefully, the success of “Pinocchio” means del Toro is able to use some of his old ideas and breathe new life into them in either animation or live-action. After all, it worked with “Pinocchio” itself.