Cate Blanchett told Guillermo del Toro that she wanted a part in this film during work on Nightmare Alley (2021), but the only character that hadn't been cast yet was Spazzatura, the monkey. To Del Toro's surprise, Blanchett wanted to voice the character anyway even though they have little actual lines and spent most of the film making sounds. In the making-of documentary, Blanchett and Del Toro confirm that she enthusiastically told him "I'll do anything. For you, I would play a pencil".
The longest stop-motion animated film.
On November 10, 2017, Guillermo del Toro announced that the project was canceled. On October 22, 2018, however, Netflix announced that del Toro was brought on board to direct a stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio, and del Toro himself tweeted concept art that shared identical character designs for his original Pinocchio project.
Unlike most versions of Pinocchio, which take place in 1800s Italy, Guillermo del Toro decided to set this version in 1930s Italy under the rule of Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party (PNF). This is the third time that del Toro has set a film during a real-life political conflict, after The Devil's Backbone (2001) and Pans Labyrinth (2006) (which took place during and after the Spanish Civil War, respectively).
Gregory Mann's voice changed during the course of production, so his voice had to be edited to sound like it was when he started to record his lines.