Why Guillermo Del Toro Abandoned His First Pinocchio Script and Changed His Villain Mid-Production

Halfway through production, del Toro would be hit with an idea: they should change the movie's villain. In Carlo Collodi's 1883 Italian children's book 'The Adventures of Pinocchio', Mangiafuoco and the fox and the cat were the main villains - renamed Stromboli, "the honest" John Worthington Foulfellow and Gideon the cat in the Disney version - while Del Toro and Gustafson's film merges these three characters into the figure of Count Volpe.

"Originally, Fox Volpe was a minor character and they kind of helped lure Pinocchio into the carnival," said co-producer Curt Enderle. "And at a certain point we realized that this character was kind of more interesting and actually Guillermo came to the end of a meeting and was like, I was thinking, 'I think we have to do some him the leader of the carnival as opposed to Mangiafuoco.'"

Del Toro was grateful to the team for their flexibility and ease of collaboration, saying:

“The collaboration was incredibly beautiful with everyone. There were certain things everyone cared about. I could agree or disagree. But the feedback was beautiful and it changed everything. give an example. A week or two too late to do that, we changed villains. The original villain was Mangiafuoco, who is a different character who is tall and burly. We were watching [Count] Volpe, and I said to Mark, 'Mark, isn't Volpe a much better villain and motive?' And originally Ron Perlman was going to play Mangiafuoco. And they said, "Imagine Christoph Waltz playing this character."