Deezone.com

The street is humming with news of a just announced stop-motion animation project called Coraline based on Neil Gaiman’s novella. The release date has been set for January 16th, 2009. The first public appearances of footage from the film were was seen as a short trailer before the film Beowulf. Wikipedia describes the story as:”

Coraline is a young, bored girl who discovers that a bricked-up wall behind a door in her flat leads to another world, with another mother, and another father. When she tries to go back, she realizes that her other mother has kidnapped her real parents and she must fight to get them back.

Sample footage from the film can be seen here:

Laika Entertainment House (formerly Vinton Studios) has funded the film with around $50 to $70 million. It will be animated and co-directed by Henry Selick and Mike Cachuela.

From a technical perspective the project is exciting as it will be the first stop-motion animation to be shot stereoscopically with a dual digital camera rig for digital 3-D exhibition. New tools are being developed which will give the stop-motion creators the same flexibility as CGI animators, making it possible to push objects forward and back in post.

Dakota Fanning will star as the voice of Coraline. Teri Hatcher will lend her voice to the roles of both Coraline’s Mother and her Other Mother. Ian McShane will voice Mr. Bobinski, a beet-eating Russian giant who lives upstairs from Coraline in her alternate reality.

Further details of the project where outlined by Neil Gaiman at a press interview at the California bookstore Keplers (October 3, 2006) for the “Fragile Things” book tour. A recording of the presentation can be seen here:

I look forward to more main-stream buzz about the stop-motion animation field… please oh please don’t be a flop.