Coraline (film)

StarringCinematographyEdited byMusic byBruno CoulaisDistributed byFocus Features (Untied States)
Universal Pictures (International)100 minutes^[2]CountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBudget$60 million^[3][4]Box office$184.5 million^[3]

Coraline is a 2009 American stop-motion animated dark fantasy horror film written for the screen and directed by Henry Selick. It is based on the 2002 novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman.^[5] Produced by Laika, as the studio's first feature film,^[6] it features the voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Keith David, John Hodgman, Robert Bailey Jr., and Ian McShane. The film tells the story of its eponymous character discovering an idealized alternate universe behind a secret door in her new home, unaware that it contains something dark and sinister.

Just as Gaiman was finishing his novella, he met Selick and invited him to make a film adaptation, as Gaiman was a fan of Selick's other stop-motion works, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996). When Selick thought that a direct adaptation would lead to "maybe a 47-minute movie", the screenplay was expanded. Looking for a design different from that of most animation, Selick discovered the work of Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi and invited him to become the concept artist. His biggest influences were on the color palette, which was muted in the real world and more colorful in the Other World, as in The Wizard of Oz. To capture stereoscopy for the 3D release, the animators shot each frame from two slightly apart camera positions. Production of the stop-motion animation took place at a warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon.^[7]

Coraline premiered at the Portland International Film Festival on February 5, 2009,^[8] and was theatrically released in the United States on February 6, by Focus Features. It received positive reviews from critics and grossed $184.5 million worldwide, making it the third-highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time, following Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).^[9] The film won Annie Awards for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production, Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production, and Best Production Design in an Animated Feature Production, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It has developed a cult following in the years since its release and is considered one of the greatest animated films of all time.

After an accident, Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones and her parents move from Michigan into the Pink Palace apartments in Oregon. While exploring in search of an old well, she meets a mysterious black cat and Wyborn "Wybie" Lovat, the landlady's grandson, who gives her a lookalike ragdoll. At home her work-at-home parents, Charlie and Mel, who work on a gardening catalog, implore her to explore the house, where she discovers a small door with a bricked up entrance. That night, a jumping mouse leads her through the door and into the Other World, where her parents' button-eyed dopplegangers lavish her with food and attention.

Upon waking, Coraline finds she has returned to the real world. She meets the other residents of the house: the "Amazing" Mr. Bobinsky, an eccentric Russian liquidator-turned-gymnast who owns a mouse circus; and retired burlesque performers, April Spink and Miriam Forcible. Bobinsky and Ms. Spink warn Coraline about the Other World, and Wybie tells her how his grandmother's sister disappeared.

Coraline returns to the Other World that day, where a mute Other Wybie accompanies her to see Mr. Bobinsky's mouse circus. When she returns yet again, the cat, who can travel between the worlds, arrives and warns her about the Other World. After watching Spink and Forcible preform, the Other Mother offers her to stay forever on the condition that buttons are sewn onto her eyes, which horrifies her and she rushes to bed. After waking up and seeing she's still in the Other World, she tries to return, but the Other Mother imprisons her in a dark room through a mirror.

There, three ghost children, one of whom Coraline recognizes as the landlady's lost sister, tell Coraline that the Other Mother is the Beldam, who lured them to the Other World and took their souls. Coraline promises to help them and the Other Wybie sends her home. Back home, she takes an Adder Stone from Spink and Forcible, and after realizing the Beldam took her parents as well, she and the cat set out to rescue them. Knowing the Other Mother loves games, she makes a deal to find the souls by the end of the day. As she finds and collects each one, the world starts to fall apart until all three are collected and only the house remains.

The Other Mother, now a spider-like monster, demands that Coraline finds her parents. Realizing they are trapped in a snowglobe and that the Beldam won't let her go, she throws the cat at her to distract her before narrowly escaping with all the souls. Coraline's parents return with no recollection of their events, and she warmly embraces them. At night, the ghosts warn her that she still isn't safe and to dispose of the key leading to the Other World. The hand of the Beldam follows Coraline to the well, intending to drag her back in, but Wybie comes in and helps destroy it, and they both throw the key and the remains into the well. Coraline's family, the Palace residents, Wybie, and her grandmother all celebrate in the Garden as the latter's missing sister is introduced.

• Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones
• Teri Hatcher as Melanie "Mel" Jones and The Beldam (also known as The Other Mother)
• Jennifer Saunders as Ms. April Spink and her Other World counterpart
• Dawn French as Ms. Miriam Forcible and her Other World counterpart
• Keith David as the cat
• John Hodgman as Charles "Charlie" Jones and The Other Father
  • John Linnell provides the Other Father's singing voice
• Robert Bailey Jr. as Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat
• Ian McShane as Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky and his Other World counterpart
• Aankha Neal, George Selick, and Hannah Kaiser as the Ghost Children
• Harry Selick and Marina Budovsky as Coraline's friends back in Pontiac, Michigan
• Carolyn Crawford as Mrs. Lovat

Director Henry Selick met author Neil Gaiman just as Gaiman was finishing the novel Coraline, which was published in 2002, and as Gaiman was a fan of Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), he invited him to make a film adaptation. As Selick thought a direct adaptation would lead to "maybe a 47-minute movie", his screenplay had some expansions, such as the creation of Wybie, who was not present in the original novel. When looking for a design different from that of most animation, Selick discovered the work of Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi and invited him to become the concept artist. One of Uesugi's biggest influences was on the color palette, which was muted in reality and more colorful in the Other World, as in The Wizard of Oz (1939).^[11] Uesugi said: "at the beginning, it was supposed to be a small project over a few weeks to simply create characters; however, I ended up working on the project for over a year, eventually designing sets and backgrounds, on top of drawing the basic images for the story to be built upon."^[12]

Coraline was staged in a 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m²) warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon.^[10][13] The stage was divided into 50 lots,^[14] which played host to nearly 150 sets.^[10] Among the sets were three miniature Victorian mansions, a 42-foot (12.8 m) apple orchard, and a model of Ashland, Oregon, including tiny details such as banners for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.^[13] The Amazing Garden scene was the most complicated set created for the film. The hundreds of handmade flowers were created to grow and move accordingly for when Coraline entered the garden.^[6] More than 28 animators worked at a time on rehearsing or shooting scenes, producing 90–100 seconds of finished animation each week.^[15] To capture stereoscopy for the 3D release, the animators shot each frame from two slightly apart camera positions.^[11]

Every object on the screen was made for the film.^[11] The crew used three 3D printing systems from Objet in the development and production of the film. Thousands of high-quality 3D models, ranging from facial expressions to doorknobs, were printed in 3D using the Polyjet matrix systems, which enable the fast transformation of CAD (computer-aided design) drawings into high-quality 3D models.^[16] The puppets had separate parts for the upper and lower parts of the head that could be exchanged for different facial expressions,^[11] and the characters could exhibit over 208,000 facial expressions.^[16] In the "Hidden Worlds: The Films of LAIKA" exhibit at Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture, the sign for "Replacing Faces" display said there were 207,336 possible face combinations for Coraline and 17,633 for her mother. There were 28 identical puppets of Coraline. Each one took 3–4 months to make and usually took 10 people to construct each one.^[17] Computer artists composited separately shot elements together or added their elements, which had to look handcrafted, not computer-generated; for instance, the flames were done with traditional animation and painted digitally, and the fog was dry ice.^[11]

At its peak, the film involved the efforts of 450 people,^[10] including 30^[13] to 35^[10] animators and digital designers in the Digital Design Group (DDG), directed by Dan Casey, and more than 250 technicians and designers.^[13] Principal photography took 18 months. One crew member, Althea Crome, was hired specifically to knit miniature sweaters and other clothing for the puppet characters, sometimes using knitting needles as thin as human hair.^[10] A single garment could take anywhere from six weeks to six months to complete. The clothes also simulated wear using paint and a file.^[11]

The soundtrack for Coraline features songs by Bruno Coulais, with one ("Other Father Song") by They Might Be Giants. The Other Father's singing voice is provided by John Linnell, one of the band's singers. The band was hired to write an entire soundtrack for the film, but according to John Flansburgh, the production team "wanted the music to be more creepy", and only one song was ultimately used.^[18] Coulais's score was performed by the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra and features choral pieces sung by the Children's Choir of Nice in a nonsense language.^[19] The main soloist, a young girl heard singing in several parts of the film, is coincidentally named Coraline.^[19] Coraline won Coulais the 2009 Annie Award for best score for an animated feature.

According to Paul Dergarabedian, a film business analyst with Media by Numbers, for the film to succeed it needed a box office comparable to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which had grossed $16 million its opening weekend and ended up grossing $125 million worldwide. Before the film's release, Dergarabedian thought Laika Studios "should be pleased" was Coraline to make $10 million in its opening weekend,^[13] in its US opening weekend, the film grossed $16.85 million, ranking third at the box office.^[9] It made $15 million during its second weekend, bringing its U.S. total up to $35.6 million, $25.5 million of which came from 3D presentations.^[20] As of September 2024, the film had grossed $116.1 million in the U.S. and Canada and $68.1 million in other territories, for a total of $184.2 million worldwide.^[3]

The film was rereleased on August 14, 2023, where it grossed over $7 million over four days.^[21][22] It was rereleased the following year in 3D on August 16, 2024, and made $12.5 million in four days, finishing fifth at the box office.^[22][23] By August 23, the 2024 re-release had grossed $29.2 million worldwide making it the highest grossing re-release in the history of Fathom Events.^[24][25]

On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 278 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With its vivid stop-motion animation combined with Neil Gaiman's imaginative story, Coraline is a film that's both visually stunning and wondrously entertaining."^[26] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 based on reviews from 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[27]

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "a beautiful film about several nasty people" as well as "nightmare fodder for children, however brave, under a certain age."^[28] David Edelstein said the film is "a bona fide fairy-tale" that needed a "touch less entrancement and a touch more ... story."^[29] A. O. Scott of The New York Times called the film "exquisitely realized", with a "slower pace and a more contemplative tone than the novel. It is certainly exciting, but rather than race through ever noisier set pieces toward a hectic climax in the manner of so much animation aimed at kids, Coraline lingers in an atmosphere that is creepy, wonderfully strange, and full of feeling."^[30]

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
Academy Awards	Best Animated Feature	Henry Selick	Nominated
American Film Institute Awards	Best 10 Movies		Won
Annie Awards
	Best Animated Feature		Nominated
	Best Directing in an Animated Feature Production	Henry Selick	Nominated
	Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production	Dawn French	Nominated
	Best Music in an Animated Feature Production	Bruno Coulais	Won
	Best Character Animation in an Animated Feature Production	Travis Knight	Nominated
	Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production	Shane Prigmore; Shannon Tindle	Won
	Best Production Design in an Animated Feature Production	Christopher Appelhans; Tadahiro Uesugi	Won
	Best Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production	Chris Butler	Nominated
Annecy International Animated Film Festival	Best Feature – Tied		Won
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards	Best Animated Feature		Nominated
BAFTA Awards	Best Animated Film		Nominated
British Academy Children's Awards	Best Feature Film	Bill Mechanic, Henry Selick, Claire Jennings, Mary Sandell	Won
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards	Best Animated Feature		Nominated
Cinema Audio Society Awards
	Lifetime Achievement	Henry Selick	Won
	Career Achievement (sound designer/re-recording mixer)	Randy Thom	Won
EDA Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award
	Best Animated Female (the character of Coraline)		Won
	Best Animated Film		Nominated
Golden Globe Awards	Best Animated Feature Film		Nominated
Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards	Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley, Music, Dialogue and ADR Animation in a Feature Film		Nominated
Online Film Critics Society Awards	Best Animated Film		Nominated
People's Choice Awards	Best Animated 3D Movie of 2009		Nominated
Producers Guild of America Awards	Producer of the Year in Animated Motion Picture		Nominated
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Animated Feature		Won
St. Louis Film Critics Awards	Best Animated Film		Nominated
Visual Effects Society Awards
	Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	Claire Jennings, Henry Selick	Nominated
	Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	Coraline – Lead Animators Travis Knight and Trey Thomas	Nominated
	Outstanding Effects Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	John Allan Armstrong, Richard Kent Burton, Craig Dowsett	Nominated
	Outstanding Models and Miniatures in a Feature Motion Picture	Deborah Cook, Matthew DeLeu, Paul Mack, Martin Meunier	Nominated
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association	Best Animated Film		Nominated

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on July 21, 2009, by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. A 3-D version comes with four sets of 3-D glasses—specifically the green-magenta anaglyph image. Coraline was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on October 12, 2009. A 3-D version of the film was also released on a 2-disc Collector's Edition. The DVD opened to first-week sales of 1,036,845 and over $19 million in revenue. Total sales stand at over 2.6 million units and over $45 million in revenue.^[4] A two-disc Blu-ray 3D set, which includes a stereoscopic 3D on the first disc and an anaglyph 3D image, was released in 2011. A new edition from Shout! Factory under license from Universal was released on August 31, 2021.^[31] The film was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on December 13, 2022.^[32]

The website for Coraline involves an interactive exploration game where the player can scroll through Coraline's world. It won the 2009 Webby Award for "Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics", both by the people and the Webby organization. It was also nominated for the Webby "Movie and Film" category.^[33] On June 16, 2008, D3 Publisher announced the release of a video game based on the film. It was developed by Papaya Studio for the Wii and PlayStation 2 and by Art Co. for Nintendo DS. It was released on January 27, 2009, close to the film's theatrical release.^[34] The soundtrack was released digitally February 3, 2009, by E1 Music, and in stores on February 24, 2009.

• List of ghost films

• Official website
• Coraline at IMDb 
• Coraline at AllMovie
• Coraline at Box Office Mojo
• Coraline at Metacritic
• Coraline at Rotten Tomatoes
• Coraline script at the Internet Movie Script Database
• Coraline: A Closer Look at Studio LAIKA's Stop-Motion Witchcraft – an open access book of academic essays about the film