Stage and screen director Sam Mendes, who won an Academy Award for his work on American Beauty, is in early discussions to direct the previously reported live-action remake of Pinocchio for Disney, according to Variety. He is also no longer attached to Disney's remake of James and the Giant Peach.
Mendes is currently represented in the West End with the forthcoming transfer of Jez Butterworth’s new play The Ferryman. The former artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse directed the Broadway productions of Cabaret (for which he earned a Tony nomination), The Vertical Hour, Gypsy (starring Bernadette Peters), and The Blue Room.
The 1940 Disney film Pinocchio, about the adventures of a wooden puppet whose nose grows each time he stretches the truth, featured such songs as “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (An Actor's Life for Me),” “No Strings on Me,” and “When You Wish Upon a Star,” sung by Pinocchio's sidekick Jiminy Cricket. The film was based on the 1883 children's book, The Adventures of Pinocchio, penned by Carlo Collodi.
A stage adaptation of the Disney title is also in the works. The production, directed by John Tiffany, will premiere later this year in the U.K.
Read: LONDON'S NATIONAL THEATRE PLANS DISNEY'S PINOCCHIO FOR CHRISTMAS