The Buried Giant: Guillermo del Toro plots stop-motion fantasy film

Guillermo del Toro has been racking up the awards wins and nominations for his stop-motion animated feature Pinocchio. The film won Best Animated Feature Film at the Golden Globes and is up for the same at the Oscars. But while we wait to see if Pinocchio is going to enable the filmmaker to take home an(other) Academy Award, del Toro is already plotting his next stop-motion animated feature. He told The Telegraph that it’s going to be based on author Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel Prize-winning fantasy adventure novel The Buried Giant!

Del Toro said (with thanks to Animation Magazine), “The next stop-motion film I’m making is an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, which I’m currently co-writing with Dennis Kelly, and we start the design process in two months. I’m shooting a live-action feature first. But in the meantime, we’re developing a look-book, and in about two years if everything goes well, we’ll start production.“

Ishiguro’s novel has the following synopsis: In post-Arthurian Britain, the wars that once raged between the Saxons and the Britons have finally ceased. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly British couple, set off to visit their son, whom they haven’t seen in years. And, because a strange mist has caused mass amnesia throughout the land, they can scarcely remember anything about him. As they are joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge and an illustrious knight, Axl and Beatrice slowly begin to remember the dark and troubled past they all share.

That definitely sounds like the makings of an intriguing stop-motion movie that could have some stunning visuals.

Have you read The Buried Giant? If so, let us know what you think of Guillermo del Toro’s plan to turn the story into a stop-motion animated feature by leaving a comment below. If you haven’t read the book yet, copies can be purchased at THIS LINK.

It took about two and a half years to do all of the stop-motion animation required for Pinocchio, so even if The Buried Giant starts filming two years from now, we might currently be around five years away from seeing it.