Have you psychologically and emotionally recovered from Guillermo del Toro’s twisted, Oscar-winning, stop-motion-animated adaptation of Pinocchio? Perhaps you’re still trying to scrub Disney’s creepy, lifeless, live-action Pinocchio movie out of your mind? Good news — you have plenty of time to heal before A Series of Unfortunate Events author Lemony Snicket and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola team up to bring yet another creepy-arse version of the puppet-boy into the world.
Well, kind of. Instead of making a movie, the two are partnering on an elaborate new edition of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio for Beehive Books. Mignola will do the illustrations, of course, which will be as gorgeously upsetting as you’d think —
— ahem — while Snicket will annotate the book. However, these won’t be normal annotations, and they won’t even be on the page; instead, they’ll be “presented as removable typewritten sheets, complete with all the tell-tale revisions and ink-stains of an incipient authorial madness,” according to a press release. For example…
To be fair, the original Adventures of Pinocchio is absolutely creepy in its own right, so other creepy interpretations of the story are simply trying to do it justice. And Beehive’s high-end, Illuminated Edition version of the novel is certainly honouring its source material with an “oversize 9×12-inch hardcover, cloth-bound in sewn signatures, and housed in an elaborately embossed and debossed die-cut slipcase, silk-screened or foil-stamped with artwork. The interior is printed on creamy, acid-free heavy-weight 140gsm uncoated paper with a fine tooth, and includes dozens of full-colour illustrations, illuminated letters, and special design pieces.”
The book just began its Kickstarter campaign today, but don’t worry — it’s already blown past its $US50,000 ($69,410) goal. So you have more than a month to order your copy… and get ready for another creepy-arse Pinocchio in your life.