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Having already starred in Disney’s billion-dollar Beauty and the Beast live-action remake, Welsh actor Luke Evans is signing on with Disney once more to appear in the House of Mouse’s new Pinocchio live-action film.
Deadline reports that Evans, who played the dastardly Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, has put pen to paper to appear as another evil Disney character, The Coachman, for Pinocchio. The film is being directed by Oscar-winner Robert Zemeckis (Forest Gump, Cast Away, Back to the Future), with another Academy Award winner, Tom Hanks, lined up to play Geppetto.
The Coachman is one of the main villains in Pinocchio; he is part of the crew that tries to tempt boys to travel to Pleasure Island where they get turned into donkeys.
The Pinocchio movie is being produced for Disney+, not theatres. No release date has been announced, and there is no word yet on who will play Pinocchio himself, a wooden toy who becomes a real boy.
The fairy tale story of Pinocchio is in the public domain, and Disney is not the only company working on a new film. Guillermo del Toro is set to direct an animated version of Pinocchio for Netflix with a cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, and Ron Perlman, among others. In 2019, Italian film director Matteo Garrone released a well-received Pinocchio movie based on the classic tale.
