Pinocchio Unstrung trailer features Robert Englund as Jiminy Cricket

The first trailer for Pinocchio: Unstrung reimagines the wooden puppet as a violent figure who hunts human flesh in his quest to become a real boy. Robert Englund provides the voice of an evil Jiminy Cricket while Richard Brake plays a creepy Geppetto, setting a grim tone for the film.

Footage shows Pinocchio stabbing people with his nose, ripping flesh and even wearing bloody hair, all rendered with gruesome practical effects. Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield says the puppet was built as a fully practical animatronic so it would feel real, and he frames the story as a twisted coming-of-age told from the puppet’s point of view — a creation struggling for autonomy while being manipulated by sinister forces.

Pinocchio: Unstrung follows Frake-Waterfield’s work on Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 and joins other entries in the Twisted Childhood Universe, including Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare and Bambi: The Reckoning, which were released in 2025. The franchise assembles characters in the public domain into a shared, darker universe.

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