Guillermo del Toro to adapt Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Buried Giant’ in stop-motion
Guillermo del Toro will follow up on the success of last year’s stop-motion animation Pinocchio with a stop-motion adaption of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2015 fantasy novel The Buried Giant. The news comes after Del Toro’s work on Pinocchio was recently nominated for an Academy Award for ‘Best Animated Film’.
Discussing the genre and his next project, del Toro told The Telegraph: “Animation has given us so many indelible images over the years, but in many ways, the industry wants to keep it at the children’s table. So I want to keep pushing the medium into areas that demonstrate its capacity. 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.”
It appears as though del Toro has his eyes firmly set on the project, adding: “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 tells of an old British couple called Axl and Beatrice who live in a fiction post-Arthurian England where none of its inhabitants are able to retain their memories in the long term. They have a vague recollection of having a son, so they travel to a nearby village to find him.
Del Toro will be hoping to take the ‘Best Animated Film‘ Oscar home this year, although he is up against fierce competition from the likes of A24’s Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Pixar’s Turning Red, Dreamworks’ Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Netflix’s The Sea Beast. He will equally hope that his The Buried Giant future project goes on to receive similar acclaim, and he has an excellent writing partner in the form of Dennis Kelly, who adapted Roald Dahl’s 1988 novel Matilda into the stage adaptation Matilda the Musical.
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