As everyone knows, Pinocchio just wants to be a real boy.
In the trailer for Pinocchio Unstrung, the next film from the creators of 2024’s micro-budget blockbuster Winnie the Pooh that bloody bashes their beloved children’s IP, he wants to be a real boy so much that he goes on a bloody murderous rampage to get there.
In perhaps the most twisted take on the much-altered classic tale, Geppetto’s (Robert Brake) famous creation discovers that the difference between a wooden doll and a boy is “organs and stuff,” and sets out to acquire the body parts he wants in the most slasher-friendly way imaginable.
We see him use his razor-sharp wooden nose to stab a girl coming out of the shower in the leg, peel the skin off a screaming man’s face, and appear to take a large amount of intestines from another injured victim. All the while, Pinocchio is being egged on by Jimmy Cricket (voiced by Robert Englund, best known for his role as Freddy Krueger), perhaps the most evil man in film. “Little by little, I’ll take everything I need to become real,” Pinocchio says.
If you thought Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio was a little on the dark side and probably not for kids, that movie was basically Disney compared to this one.
“Pinocchio: Unstring” is directed by Rhys Flake-Waterfield and produced by Scott Jeffrey, the duo behind “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” and prolific horror standard-bearer Jagged Edge Productions.
In addition to Brake and England, the cast includes Cameron Bell, Jessica Ballmer, Jack Art Gray, and Peter de Sousa-Fahony, with Emmy Award winner Todd Masters overseeing the hands-on animatronics. ITN Distribution is overseeing the release, with a worldwide theatrical release currently scheduled. Premiere Entertainment Group will handle sales.
“We built Pinocchio as a fully functional animatronic because we wanted him to feel real,” says Flake Waterfield. “This is a twisted coming-of-age story told from the perspective of a doll, from Robert Englund’s evil Jiminy Cricket to Richard Brake’s obsessive Geppetto, who struggles for independence while being controlled by the evil forces around them. ”
“Pinocchio Unstrung” is the latest independent addition to Jagged Edge’s low-budget and growing Twisted Childhood Universe, which currently includes “Blood and Honey” and its sequels “Bambi: The Reckoning” and “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare.” The third, “Blood and Honey,” is set to shoot soon, and “Pooniverse Monsters Assemble,” an Avengers-like crossover film that will bring all the characters together for IP carnage, is in development.
Added Flake-Waterfield: “Our Twisted Childhood universe continues to grow in darker and more ambitious ways as we prepare for Pooniverse Monsters Assemble!”
Watch the trailer for “Pinocchio Unstrung” below.
