‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’ on course to deliver Netflix its first animated feature Oscar
While Netflix is still waiting for its first Best Picture win, the king of streaming is on the cusp of taking home a different Oscar: the one for Best Animated Feature.
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” directed by the Oscar winner and Mark Gustafson, is a reimagining of Carlo Collodi’s classic tale about a wooden puppet who comes to life. Featuring the voices of Gregory Mann and David Bradley as Pinocchio and his father, the carpenter Geppetto, respectively, the film also includes a memorable turn from two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, nominated again this year for her work in “TÁR,” as the mistreated monkey Spazzatura.
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The film received rave reviews when it premiered and is considered a visually stunning interpretation of the source material that leans into darker themes about life and death. It is a perfect example of how animation lends itself to more than just so-called movies for children. As del Toro said in his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, “Animation is cinema. Animation is not a genre for kids. It’s a medium.”
SEE ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’ and 9 other stop-motion animated films you should watch
The movie, which uses stop-motion animation — a style that, unfortunately, rarely gets its due come Oscar time — cleaned up at the Annie Awards in February, walking away with five awards, including Best Studio Animated Feature. Seven of the last 12 winners have gone on to win the Oscar: “Rango” (2011), “Frozen” (2013), “Inside Out” (2015), “Zootopia” (2016), “Coco” (2017), “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018) and “Soul” (2020). So if “Pinocchio” was not already the heavy favorite to take home the Academy Award, it almost certainly is now. And the odds more than back it up. The film currently sits in first place at 31/10, with 21 Experts and 12 editors predicting it to triumph over the competition, which includes “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” (second place, 4/1 odds), “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (third, 9/2), “Turning Red” (fourth, 9/2) and “The Sea Beast” (fifth, 9/2).
A win for “Pinocchio” would mark Netflix’s first in the category in four nominations. Previous nominees include “Klaus” (2019) and “Over the Moon” (2020), while “The Sea Beast” is the studio’s fourth bid. But while becoming Netflix’s first film to win Best Animated Feature would be a remarkable achievement on its own, should “Pinocchio” triumph, it will also have the honor of being one of the rare films to beat Pixar at its own game. The popular animation studio has dominated the category since its inception around the turn of the millennium, winning 11 times out of 16 nominations (“Turning Red” is its 17th nom). “Pinocchio” would also be just the second stop-motion film to win after 2005’s “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.”
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