The production of this ill fated film all began on January 1935 when politician Alfredo Rocco decided to commission the first Italian produced animated movie at the newly formed studio CAIR(Cartoni Animati Italiani Roma). The studio chose to adapt the "Adventures of Pinocchio" by Collodi as their first film. After having bought the film rights from the publisher R. Bemporad & Figlio, the studio began production. The planned amount of drawings for a year of work was 110,000, with an estimated budget of 1 million lira, and the international distribution handled by De Vecchi was scheduled for autumn 1936. However within a year, the film's production staff faced both technical & money issues. The studio CAIR exhausted all of their finances and ended up ceasing all activity on their Pinocchio film with only 150,000 drawings & 105 minutes of animation being the end result of the short lived production. Four years later, Raoul Verdini one of the original animators of the production attempted to finish the film by trying to convert it in color with the Catalucci system. He eventually failed to get the film off the ground, and toward the end, the film remained unfinished and became lost. All that remains of the film are several still images of various scenes, character models, and the original script.
Had this film been finished and publicly been released in 1936, it would have been the first animated film based on Carlo Collodi's book "The Adventures of Pinocchio". That honor was given to Disney's second animated film, Pinocchio (1940). While there wouldn't be an Italian produced animated Pinocchio film until 35 years later with the release of The Adventures of Pinocchio (1971).
It would have been Italy's first feature length animated film. That honor was given to The Dynamite Brothers (1949) which was released publicly at the 10th Venice International Film Festival.
It would have beaten Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) as the first cel animated feature length film had it been completed and released publicly.
The model sheets for the film were created by Raoul Verdini and Barbara Mamelli, who were also the co-designers of the satirical newspaper "Marc'Aurelio".