The children’s movie Stanley Kubrick never had the chance to make: “He wanted to do something really big”
Stanley Kubrick left a lofty legacy behind, but it was supposed to be even bigger. At the time of his death in 1999, he’d directed 13 feature films, including some of the most defining and beloved flicks in modern cinematic history. However, we were denied a few other movies, including one kids’ film adaptation, which especially got cut before it started.
It’s hard to imagine Kubrick going anywhere near a children’s story. His films deal heavily with the weird and regularly violent aspects of society. His characters are known for playing on the lines of derangement and psychopathy, from the outright terrifying villain of The Shining’s Jack Torrance to the wild Droogs of A Clockwork Orange. Even in his less action-heavy film, the director never shied away from controversial and tricky topics. In Dr Strangelove, he tackled politics with a dose of dark humour. When he picked up Lolita in 1962, he dared to take on one of the most controversial texts in literary history.
There were several projects on his desk that never got made. Two of them fit what would be expected of the director as he never got around to finishing a biopic about Napoleon Bonaparte or a stark film about the Holocaust. But in an interview with The Guardian, the director’s assistant Emilio D’Alessandro also revealed he was planning to make an adaptation of Pinocchio.
Towards the end of his life, Kubrick seemed locked in and focused on this new idea, sending his assistant out to gather as much information on the classic tale as possible. He especially wanted to get back to the source, trying to gather more knowledge about the original 1880s Italian kids’ book by Carlo Collodi.
“He wanted to make it in his own way because so many Pinocchios have been made,” D’Alessandro said. Obviously, the most famous adaptation is the 1940s Disney animation, which boils the story down into a more palatable one than Collodi’s original, slightly twisted tale. The Italian story, at its core, was always a metaphor for honesty and the human condition; that’s what seemed to interest Kubrick.
“He wanted to do something really big,” his assistant remembered. But it wasn’t that the director wanted to take this children’s story and make it scary or dark. He genuinely wanted to make something joyful, as he’s remembered as saying, “‘‘It would very nice if I could make children laugh and feel happy by making this Pinocchio.’”
According to D’Alessandro, his primary motivation was making something that his grandchildren could enjoy. As most of his films contain adult subjects or violence, he wanted to make a piece of his legacy that they could engage with as kids.
But the film never got made. Kubrick worked up until his death, leaving behind several shells of ideas or half-planned next steps. It seemed that even at age 70, the director’s cinematic mind was still sharp and busy. However, the very nature of creativity is that it’s singular. Even with the best teams following close to his left-behind instructions, Kubrick’s Pinocchio could never have been made without Kubrick himself to steer.
