The Big Picture
LAIKA’s Coraline, based on Neil Gaiman’s novella, is being re-released in theaters next week, freshly remastered. An exclusive new video shows how Coraline went from a novella to a fully realized film, with immense attention to detail in creating characters and their world. Coraline was a groundbreaking film, featuring animation firsts like Stereoscopic 3D and replacement faces printed on a 3D printer.
If you’re a child of a certain age — well, adult now — there’s one scary movie that probably defined your experience with horror growing up, whether it scared you off for good or pulled you in and made you want more and more. That movie, of course, is LAIKA’s Coraline, based on the iconic Neil Gaiman novella of the same name. The story of a young girl who travels to an alternate universe that turns out to be not so friendly was the studio’s first-ever feature film, boasting the voice talents of icons like Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Ian McShane, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, and more. Now, the seminal film that scared the pants off of every kid (and maybe their parents too) in 2009 is coming back to theaters next week, freshly remastered, and in honor of the re-release, Collider is excited to share an exclusive look behind the curtain at how the spooky stop-motion story was brought to life.
The video takes a look at how Coraline went from a novella conjured on the page by the man who also brought us American Gods and Good Omens to a fully realized film, one that focused in immense detail on creating not only the Other World, but the people (and things) who reside within it. If it wasn’t obvious in the film’s beautiful craftsmanship and utterly unsettling plot, LAIKA took special care to make each and every character feel lived in and real, giving their costumes, models, hair, and makeup all the same attention as a human actor would receive. (Coraline even had multiple “stunt wigs,” since she goes through so much!) A whopping seventy-three characters were designed for the film, and every single one of them made an appearance in the final film — a massive amount of work for what was then a fledgling stop-motion animation studio.
An Other World of Animation Firsts
Image via LAIKA
Directed by Henry Selick, Coraline boasts a number of achievements as a film, not only for LAIKA, but for animation as a medium. The film was the first ever to be entirely shot and conceived in Stereoscopic 3D, then a new art form, and LAIKA became the first company to ever produce a feature-length movie with replacement faces printed on a 3D printer, changing the game for how stop-motion characters can emote forever. Many of their impressive effects shots were achieved entirely in camera, including the first-ever animated “morphing” sequence, where the Other Mother goes from simply a normal mom to a terrifying, lanky monster – the sequence involved a whopping seventy-eight faces for Other Mother, and more than a hundred and seventeen hairpieces. Talk about a high-maintenance villain!
The Journey From Page to Screen
Coraline took over four years to create, starting preproduction in 2005 but not hitting screens until 2009—just in time for an entire generation of Gen Z kids (myself included) to begin fearing buttons and tiny crawl spaces for the rest of their childhoods. Gaiman himself loved the film—“stop-motion combines imagination with a tangible reality and solidity, and Henry’s work in the medium catches my heart,” he said—and allowed director Selick to run wild with his ideas, changing and adapting them as needed. While the original sure is enough to set any kid straight, the world created by the team at LAIKA is even more lush and detailed, setting the stage for a studio that would then go on to create iconic films like ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Boxtrolls, and Missing Link.
Coraline returns to theaters courtesy of Fathom Events on August 14 and 15, with a new date added on August 28 to meet fan demand. The presentation comes with an exclusive introduction that will give fans an even better look at original costumes, props, and set pieces from the film before they re-experience it on the big screen. Tickets and a full list of participating theaters can be found on Fathom’s website. Check out the new video celebrating Coraline’s legacy down below:
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