Pinocchio: Unstrung (2026) on Netflix
NR20261h 22mFantasyHorrorMystery
After a car accident kills his parents, fourteen-year-old James moves in with his grandfather Geppetto. Geppetto builds Pinocchio, a wooden puppet whose nose grows when he lies.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb5.4/103,823 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
James is fourteen when his parents die in a car accident. He moves in with his grandfather Geppetto. He becomes friends with Zach and Dudley, but Zach dies of cancer, and Geppetto vows to make a friend for his grandson who will not leave him. A year later, Trey and Logan bully James at high school. Woken by noises one night, he goes down to the basement, where Geppetto shows him Pinocchio, a wooden puppet whose nose grows when he lies, built to be James's companion. The two grow close, and Pinocchio, learning about human anatomy, wishes to become a real boy. When James is away at school, Pinocchio finds a disfigured wooden creature who calls herself his Wood Mother and tells him that he is only a puppet; to become real, he will need human organs.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pinocchio: Unstrung (2026)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The production built two identical Pinocchio puppets nicknamed "Lighty," an animatronic used for pool scenes that was actually quite heavy despite its name, and "Stunty," a rod-operated puppet with an inanimate head that puppet-effects supervisor Todd Masters called "the most abused puppet" for being thrown down stairs and otherwise beaten up during filming.
- Because of the film's low budget, the crew used a plain green bedsheet in place of a proper green screen.
- Robert Englund had played the title role of Pinocchio himself as a child at the Teenage Drama Workshop, and he saw voicing the Talking Cricket decades later as a way to close that loop.
- The film's animated opening sequence, title card and end credits were made entirely practically: director Rhys Frake-Waterfield, Scott Chambers, cinematographer Vince Knight and his girlfriend used cutout puppets with one of Chambers's towels as a backdrop, working in the front room on New Year's Eve.
- To focus entirely on directing Pinocchio Unstrung, Rhys Frake-Waterfield handed creative control of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 to Scott Chambers, saying he wanted to avoid "stretching [himself] too thin" after directing the first two Blood and Honey films.
