Henry Selick is a legend in stop-motion animation. He’s the director behind Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (which you can soon see in theaters in remastered 3D).
Selick is looking to add another Gaiman stop-motion adaptation to his belt. During the Annecy Festival (via Variety), he shared that he hopes to make The Ocean at the End of the Lane his next project and called it a “spiritual sequel” to Coraline.
“Instead of a child going to this other world with a monstrous mother, it’s a monstrous mother who comes into our world to wreak havoc on a kid’s life,” he told Variety.
Selick currently has a 35-page proposal along with artwork and concept designs for the adaption in hand, and is taking it to various studios. Those he’s pitching to include ShadowMachine, which made Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and of course LAIKA, which made Coraline.
Things are far from confirmed, of course, but it sounds like the stop-motion project has strong prospects to ultimately make it through development and production. And if it does, there’s also a good chance that it will hold a place in the stop-motion pantheon.
“Our films have always had a smaller market,” Selick said at Annecy (via Variety) about stop-motion. “But they last longer, and will have a much longer life… The best stop motion films aren’t just of this moment. They’re for all time.”
