Yahoo News Henry Selick wants to revisit scrapped Ocean at the End of the Lane stop-motion movie
Out of the projects that failed to come to fruition over the years, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the one director Henry Selick would most like to revisit.
The renowned stop-motion animator behind classic films like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline, and James and the Giant Peach previously told press he wrote 50 pages of a script for a movie based on author Neil Gaiman's "best work." Selick now reveals exclusively to EW that he was referencing Gaiman's 2013 modern fairy tale centered on an unnamed man who returns to his childhood home for a funeral when he's flooded by memories of his childhood entanglement in a magical conflict.
After making Coraline, his 2009 stop-motion animated film based on Gaiman's spooky tale of the same name, Selick says he met again with LAIKA, the indie stop-motion studio behind Coraline, about "another Neil Gaman project" that turned out to be The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
A rep for LAIKA said the studio does not comment on development.
Eric Charbonneau/Shutterstock; William Morrow Henry Selick reveals his scrapped stop-motion film for Neil Gaiman's 'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' — which still might happen.
"I would consider it," Selick says of making another film with LAIKA. Of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, specifically, he reiterates his past remark. "It's [Gaiman's] best book," he says. "It was set up as live-action, and then Neil gave me a chance with it, which would be amazing as a stop-motion film. But it also would have to be PG-13, which honestly is, I think, a draw for 10-year-olds. They don't wanna see G or PG."
As for Selick's new movie Wendell & Wild, in theaters now and coming to Netflix Oct. 28, he notes it's rated PG-13 but doesn't have excessive violence or sex. "I think it's a good thing for the most part," he says. "From us, that's how it has to be done. I'm in touch with Neil, and he's become super successful with some of his series. The more involved Neil is with adaptations, the better those projects are, I think, starting primarily with Good Omens."
Selick says the future of his stop-motion treatment for The Ocean at the End of the Lane depends on the success of Wendell & Wild. "It was something I took there to LAIKA, and then Neil took the project back for a while. Then I saw him again. I said, 'Look, why don't you give me another shot?' We just have to see how Wendell & Wild goes. We've got some really good reviews, and then we just have to see if people watch it to keep making another one."
Netflix Lyric Ross stars in 'Wendell & Wild' as an Afro-punk teen whose tricked into summoning two demon brothers to the land of the living.
This kind of development struggle is something Selick is familiar with. After making Coraline, the filmmaker had a deal at Disney's Pixar to make another stop-motion movie, The Shadow King, which has become a storied lost-to-the-ages project for those who follow animation. It was to be the story of a 9-year-old orphan in New York marked by long, spindly fingers. A living shadow girl teaches him to use his appendages to create shadow puppets that come to life, turning him into a weapon in a war against a ravenous shadow monster.
"I've got five minutes of finished footage. It's beautiful," Selick says of that project. "But the two things that happened were... Our deal was if we could do it for a budget which was less than a third of a regular Pixar film. It was plenty of money." He notes the problem was that John Lasseter, then the head of Pixar, "just couldn't help himself and changed things the way he was used to doing on all the other Pixar films."
"So costs started going up and up and up, and we're scrambling to keep people busy," Selick continues. "End of the day, if he just left us alone, they would've had a really good movie for the budget — blah, blah, blah. But that's just not the way he worked back then or how Pixar works. Between the rising costs and [then Walt Disney Studios chairman] Alan Horn coming in and looking at the film, he's like, 'Yeah, we don't know how to sell this. This is too weird for us.' It's not weird at all. It's much more mainstream than anything else I've done, but they shut us down and that was a huge blow."
Selick may just end up revisiting The Shadow King and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. He confirms he got the rights back, though he has to pay Disney "a little fee." Again, he says, "I think it all comes down to how my film does." In short, go watch Wendell & Wild, people!
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