“Coraline,” since it was the last feature project that Selick completed, is as good a place as any to start when it comes to explaining where the director has been for the past decade.
Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman, “Coraline” was released in February 2009. It was warmly received by critics and wound up a modest box office hit, grossing more than $100 million on a $60 million budget.
It also formally announced the arrival of LAIKA, a stop-motion animation studio based in Portland, Oregon (it was formerly known as Will Vinton Studios), as a major player.
It was assumed that Selick would stick around LAIKA, since they shared his dedication to stop-motion and his somewhat macabre sensibilities.But a year later, in an unprecedented move, Disney announced a long-term deal with Selick, along with two feature projects – an original stop-motion film called “Shademaker” (later retitled “The Shadow King”) and an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book” (a riff on “The Jungle Book” but with monsters instead of giant cats).
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