Ewan McGregor and Cate Blanchett to star in Netflix's Pinocchio musical film

Ewan McGregor and Cate Blanchett are among those cast in Netflix's new animated musical Pinocchio, which is set to be directed by veteran creative Guillermo Del Toro.

Based on children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) by Italian writer Carlo Collodi of Florence, the piece follows a young puppet who is brought to life. Del Toro's version will be set during the rise of Fascism in Mussolini's Italy.

It is set to star Ewan McGregor (WhatsOnStage Award winner for Guys and Dolls in 2006) as Cricket, Tilda Swinton (who worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company for one season), Cate Blanchett (recently on stage at the National in When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other), David Bradley (Harry Potter series) as Gepetto and Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), with newcomer Gregory Mann in the titular role.

Also lending voices to the film are Christoph Waltz, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson and Burn Gorman. Aside from Cricket, Pinocchio and Gepetto, the character list is to be revealed.

Co-directed by del Toro and Mark Gustafson, the piece has music by Alexandre Desplat, script by del Toro and Patrick McHale. The song lyrics are by del Toro and Katz.

The new animated musical film is not associated with the Disney film of the same name (which was recently brought to the stage at the National Theatre). A live-action adaptation of Pinocchio being produced by Disney and directed by Robert Zemeckis (who worked on the recent Back to the Future musical) is reportedly in the works, with Tom Hanks in talks to play Gepetto.