By Sarah Sluis
The Portland, Oregon, studio Laika suffered a big blow last year, when Coraline director Henry Selick defected to Pixar. Not that I blame him--Pixar is just about the coolest place to work, and it helps to be part of a team that's producing hit after hit. But that doesn't mean Laika's over and out. The studio has a couple of projects in the works, including ParaNorman, a dark stop-motion animated picture that's 
ParaNorman centers on a boy (voiced by Kodi Smit-Phee of horror pic Let Me In) who can speak with the dead, which in this movie includes zombies and ghosts. He must use his powers in order to save his town from a hundred-year curse. In a kid movie nod, he must deal not only with the undead but clueless grown-ups. Chris Butler, who has been working as a storyboard artist, character designer, and sequence director, will make his directing debut with the movie. Apparently Butler is big on the lecture circuit. A good communicator = good director in my book. The voice cast includes such well-known names as Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Anna Kendrick, Leslie Mann, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.
Like Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and other spooky kids' movies, Laika's latest feature will definitely not be an all-ages hit like Pixar movies or the current worldwide success, Rio. But that's okay. Focus, which is the indie arm of Universal, will distribute the film as part of a two-picture deal with the budding animation studio.
Stop-motion movies take a notoriously long time to make, but fans of dark animated tales can rejoice: ParaNorman has set a release date of August 17, 2012--in 3D, no less.
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