How many movies about Pinocchio are there? What are the best ones?
After 140 years, there are still new versions of the iconic tale being released. We rank the best Pinocchio films of all time...
The story of Pinocchio is one of the most iconic children’s tales of all times and remains popular today, 140 years after the story was first published. The fairy tale was first introduced in ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’, a children’s novel written by Italian Carlo Collodi in 1883.
In the story Geppetto, a woodcarver from the Tuscany region of Italy, creates a wooden puppet who longs to grow into a real boy. His creation, Pinocchio, is known for his distinctive long, slender nose that grows larger when he tells lies.
Last year there were three new cinematic adaptions of the classic tale, adding to a century-long list of silver screen versions. Disney’s original Pinocchio (1940) remains the most iconic version for many, but how do the different Pinocchio version compare in the ratings?
IMDB has ranked the top ten Pinocchio movies…
10. ‘Pinocchio’ (2015) - 4.8
9. ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ (1996) - 5.2
8. ‘Pinocchio’ (2008) - 5.4
7. ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ (1911) - 5.8
6. ‘Pinocchio’ (2012) - 6.0
5. ‘Pinocchio’ (2019) - 6.2
4. ‘Pinocchio’ (1971) - 6.8
3. ‘Pinocchio’ (1940) - 7.5
2. ‘Pinocchio’ / ‘Turlis Abenteuer’ (1967) - 7.7
1. ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’ (2022) - 8.0
How many Pinocchio films were released in 2022?
For many people the Disney version of the tale remains the classic telling of Pinocchio, but there are no shortage of alternatives over the decades. In 2022 alone there were three different Pinocchio films released, although they received differing responses.
Disney+ released a live-action remake of the original 1940 version, but the new iteration failed to add anything significant to the story. Disney have been criticised for sticking too closely to the original material in their retellings of Jungle Book and other classic films, and their Pinocchio reboot also falls foul of that issue.
Another 2022 version, Pinocchio: A True Story, is a Russian-produced, English-dubbed offering that attempts to show a new side of the classic tale. However those efforts are undone by poor execution with recycled footage used to cut corners in production.
By far the best of the new version in ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’, which has received the best IMDB rating of any of the Pinocchio films. It took nearly a decade for Del Toro to secure the funding for his stop-motion project, but after Netflix stepped in to get the film off the ground it has been a huge success.