Filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro has revealed he approached every big studio in Hollywood to pitch his idea for a dark Pinocchio movie.
The Oscar-winning director said he ended up at Netflix when everyone else turned down his stop-motion musical project.
''I went to every studio in Hollywood and they all said no, so whoever says yes, I will make it with that person," Del Toro told the Hollywood Reporter at the Marrakech Film Festival.
The director said he had a hard time selling his remake of the Italian children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio because the project is set to be a dark political parable set ''during the rise of Mussolini''.
''It's not a Pinocchio for all the family. Of course [it is political]. Pinocchio during the rise of Mussolini, do the math. A puppet during the rise of fascism, yes, it is [political].'
''There's no fable without politics. Rarely can you get in productive discussions in real life right now it's so tense. It's much easier for you to listen to me if I tell you 'Once upon a time ...'" he said.
Del Toro even compared the titular puppet-come-to-life to Frankenstein's monster.
''He's a creature that is created through unnatural means from a father that he then distances (himself) from, and has to learn about failure and pain and loneliness.''