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While no deals are in place with Burton and Downey, the two have for months been dancing around the project and talking to the studio about it. Goldman's hiring is meant to bring the courtship to a close and initiate commitments as she will be incorporating Downey's notes.

Dan Jinks is producing.

The Pinocchio story is a children’s classic (written by Italian Carlo Collodi), though it might be best remembered via the 1940 animated Disney classic.

In the version being developed at Warner Bros., Downey would play Geppetto, the woodcarver who creates a puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy and whose nose grows when he tells a lie. When Pinocchio goes missing, Geppetto embarks on a quest to reunite with his marionette.

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Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies) wrote the initial draft.

Goldman is a British author and screenwriter who is widely respected in the fanboy community. She is a frequent collaborator of Matthew Vaughn’s, having adapted Neil Gaiman’s Stardust for the director and worked with him again on 2010’s Kick-Ass and 2011’s X-Men: First Class. Goldman also penned The Woman in Black, CBS Films’ hit adaptation of the Susan Hill novel.

She is repped by WME.