“THIS IS MY Pinocchio,” announces Guillermo del Toro of his stop-motion adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s boy-puppet fantasy story. The filmmaker has dedicated a career to bringing all manner of misfits and mythical creatures to the screen, but there was one who has spoken to him above all else. “No single character in history has had as deep a personal connection to me as Pinocchio,” he said in 2018, some ten years after first announcing that he would be adapting the story. A further four years down the line, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is finally entering the world. It was worth the fight to the finish line. “There are many ways you can make a Pinocchio movie happen,” del Toro tells Empire, “but not this particular incarnation.”