Tim Burton will direct, and Robert Downey Jr. will star in, Tim Burton's Pinocchio, a live-action retelling of the timeless fairytale.

Robert Downey Jr. is set to play Geppetto, a woodcarver who creates a puppet that comes to life only to dream of becoming a real boy. Tim Burton's Pinocchio will actually follow Geppetto's quest to find his missing puppet, offering the flipside to this oft told tale. Bryan Fuller is responsible for the screenplay.

Neither Tim Burton nor Robert Downey Jr. have a deal in place to move forward on the movie, which is being set up at Warner Bros. But both are anxious to make the film. Warner Bros. wants to go into production soon, so it may end up being the director's next project after Dark Shadows, even though he has a lot of potential scripts he could move on.

Tim Burton's Pinocchio is one of many movies about the living puppet current in production, including a stop-motion retelling from Guillermo del Toro.