It’s the end of a long day of press junket interviews and, still, Guillermo del Toro speaks to me as if he has just sprung out of bed, an electric generosity that would be hard to believe if it were anyone else. The Mexican filmmaker is glistening with the adrenaline of the impending London Film Festival world premiere of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, a film fifteen years in the making.

Much like what happened with Andrew Dominik’s long-time passion project Blonde, Netflix stepped in to make del Toro’s dream film a reality after years of development hell, allowing the director to realize the project on the mammoth scale needed to bring his vision to life. Del Toro then brought in animation expert Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox) as co-director and spent over a thousand days in production, with dozens of stop-motion animators working on this fresh adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 classic tale of a wooden puppet who wanted to be a real boy.

“I was pretty confused when I heard this was going to be set in fascist Italy but now I can’t imagine Pinocchio being about anything else,” states Jacob Hann on Letterboxd of the decision to tell the story against the backdrop of Mussolini’s Italy. Davis Raine adds, “Death and fascism may not seem like ideal subjects for a life-affirming fantasy stop-motion animated film, but this story, set in an animated world straight out of [the] Pan’s Labyrinth playbook was nothing short of a masterpiece… Del Toro, the master of the macabre, shows us once again why he is arguably one of the greatest filmmakers that has ever lived.”

It’s tempting to jump to hyperbole when speaking about Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, a film that manages to stay beautifully attuned to the layered nuances of human existence while presenting a technical and visual spectacle of proportions rarely seen in the history of stop-motion animation. To top it off, del Toro enlisted a cast of contributors old and new to bring vocal excellence to match the wondrous sights: Cate Blanchett as Spazzatura the monkey, Tilda Swinton in dual roles as the Wood Sprite and Death, Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket, Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe and newcomer Gregory Mann as the titular character.

The day before the film’s premiere, I walked from room to room at the imposing hotel where Netflix launched its promotional campaign, speaking with del Toro, Gustafson, Mann and Waltz about the mythology behind the character of Pinocchio, the idea of legacy and the importance of stop-motion animation.

GDT: It’s funny because the original Pinocchio was one of the scariest movies I ever saw. When I was a kid, I was as scared as I had ever been of a horror movie during the sequences at Pleasure Island.

Adapting such an old, important story brings me back to the idea of legacy, of tales told by the fire, stories that withstand the test of time. How do you feel, as an artist, about this notion of legacy?
GDT: To me, what was important was to retell it in a way that made sense to us. For me, to make disobedience a virtue, to tell you that you don’t have to be changed by others to be accepted as a human, to tell you that death is important to make sense of life… Values or ideas that are counter to the traditional telling of that story, but that make it worth telling.

MG: You can hear the same story but, depending on who the storyteller is, it’ll be completely different. I think Guillermo and Patrick [McHale, co-writer] really found a different way to tell the same story, in an important way. I think it’s timely.

You come from different countries, different cultures. I am curious if you remember the first time you heard about the story of Pinocchio.
MG: It was kind of late in life for me. [Laughs] My parents didn’t want me to watch a lot of things. We had a very sheltered life. I just remember I was always attracted to these stories of an innocent entity dropped into the world, like Astro Boy, and the odds seemed overwhelmingly against them but they were so bright and it was all so new to them. You have to cheer for them, you want to follow them, you want to see what happens. As a child, we’re inventing ourselves every day, and the world seems scary, so that’s why it’s an attractive story, I think.

GDT: Even before I saw the movie with my mum in the re-release—because Disney used to re-release its classics in the cinema in Mexico—I already knew the figure and the story through coloring books and books for kids. I didn’t quite understand the power. When we saw the movie together, I found it to be scary, disorienting, elating, fun… Everything at the same time. But there was something slightly daunting about the way Pinocchio had to face the world that I identified with. I really identified with that daunting feeling about the world being a scary place.

Guillermo, you’ve been dreaming of making this film for almost fifteen years. How does it feel to be able to finally share it with the world?
GDT: You know, it’s like when you’re about to send your kid to school, pun intended. [Laughs] And you don’t know if they’re going to meet the fox or the cat. I don’t know, we’ll find out when people see it!

You said earlier today when speaking to the press that “stop motion is a technique that is perpetually in extinction...”
MG: I would agree. It feels antiquated, it feels like something that probably shouldn’t exist…

GDT: It’s time-consuming…

MG: And irritating! [Laughs] Ultimately, there is something about it that just connects. You feel the hand of the artist so much. Technology hasn’t gotten in between the audience and the film. There is something really powerful in that.

GDT: It feels like a toy world made alive.

MG: What I love about stop-motion is that I get to play with toys. I still get to play with my dolls. I think the way an audience relates to seeing puppets is the same way that they related to their toys, somehow, which is really powerful.

Pinocchio will be made widely available across the world on Netflix. How do you feel about the level of access that this grants to a stop-motion animated film?
GDT: Viewing habits are changing. They have changed. We have a very strong and healthy theater release before its release on Netflix and that’s a choice I hope people take. But I also know that, for my generation, we discovered a lot of things on TV, and I do want this to speak to the next generation of animators, to the next generation of storytellers, and that gives us a really good chance to connect with millions and millions more.

Gregory and Christoph, when was the first time you encountered the tale of Pinocchio?
Gregory Mann: I’m not sure if I can remember because you don’t really remember things from before you were seven, but I know I watched it because it’s a classic movie that every child has watched.

Christoph Waltz: I do remember things from before I was seven. Plenty. I remember things from before I was five. Don’t be mistaken that you don’t remember, you do. It may not be present at this moment, that’s true, but you will remember sooner or later. I do remember my first encounter with Pinocchio—it was not the Disney movie. It’s a book, you know? I read the book when I was little and remember liking it very much. I thought the metamorphosis, this transformation from a wooden puppet into a living boy, was terribly exciting.

Did you experience any doubts about joining the project, knowing the pressure that might come with the legacy of the story?
GM: For me, it was a no-brainer. I got the audition and tried as hard as I could because I’ve always wanted to be in animation. It’s such an exciting thing to be behind a character, so I went into it with a big smile on my face and took every opportunity I could.

CW: I’m much more ruthless, you know? I take the script in front of me as the measure and the gauge. And the people I’m supposed to be working with, in that respect.

CW: When you do the voice in an animated movie, you do not ever get to meet the animators. It’s such a complex, complicated and intricate process to animate pictures or, in this case, even more so with puppets. Stop-motion is more involved than regular animation because you can’t deploy the computer to alter the images. So, you know, these poor people who are toiling away over years—literally years—the last thing they need are actors who think they have an idea.

Do you feel there is a distance to you as an actor that comes with not having the physical embodiment of a character?
GM: I found it hard because there was no screen to see what Pinocchio looked like and what was going on in the scene. But Guillermo would always give me good prompts and I would always be able to get my head around it.

CW: It’s a different job. It has its limitations, but every job does. Some people do it better than others. Apparently, there’s a real talent involved… I don’t really know. It’s not rocket science.

This project has been a long-time dream of Guillermo. How was working with him on it?
GM: Working with Guillermo was incredible. It made things so much easier because with voice acting you don’t always have a prompt as you do in real life, where you are there on the set, so Guillermo helped me get back on track. Even though I was in a little booth, he helped me picture being in that environment.

Were you familiar with his work?
GM: Not really. But my dad, who is really into movies, and speaks about all the best movies and best directors, was over the moon when he found out Guillermo was directing.

What will you remember most fondly about the experience?
GM: It’s all been incredible. I took every opportunity I could. I’ve been to America, so it’s been a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I am going to remember it for the rest of my life.

CW: Well, let’s hope not!

And do you, Christoph, hold any particularly fond memories of making the film?
CW: I like working, so doing something that I find worthwhile is a fond memory in general. I won’t stop mentioning my friend Alexandre Desplat, who we got to work with and who is an incredibly accomplished musician. It’s great to spend time with him and with Guillermo and all his people. So it was good from A to Z. It would be almost unfair to pick an individual little detail.