One of our editors just handed me a copy of Variety. It appears that Guillermo de Toro is set to produce a stop-motion animated feature of Gris Grimly‘s illustrated edition of Pinocchio, to be written and directed by Grimly and Adam Parish King. Grimly promises it will be a “dark and witty film that will frighten the little ones and excite the big ones.”
A good friend of mine, Jonathan Schmidt, started Starscape, Tor’s young adult line. At that point it’s mission was modest: it was to repackage and reposition books on our adult list that were getting a good reception in YA markets despite the fact they were never targeted as such. At that point I had been at Tor for seven years and it was very exciting to have a whole new aesthetic open up to me. Some of those covers are still my favorites.
One of the first books we did was Joan Aiken’s The Cockatrice Boys with a Gris Grimly cover. A few days after I gave him the assignment, he called to say how much he loved the book and inform me he was going to do interior art for it. I kept telling him we didn’t have the budget for that but he really didn’t want to hear it. So…he did a series of scary/funny/fantastic drawings and we found a little more budget for him. (He also did the cover twice, but that’s another story.)
It gave Jonathan and I the idea that we might be able to sneak in a few illustrated classics within our list of contemporary authors. First up, Pinocchio with Gris, of course. I loved his work so much I bought the cover painting. The second was Peter Pan with Charles Vess. Sadly, Jonahan left the company before we got to a third book. I kept pushing for Wizard of Oz with Jon Foster. (Please, somone, hire Jon Foster to illustrate Oz.)
Anyway….all of this is a long winded way to say: ZOMFG, I’m so excited to see this movie!
