Henry Selick Lands Long-Term Disney Animation Deal

You've got to be happy for Henry Selick. He's stuck to his guns even when there were some awfully lean years for the type of material he makes, and last year, Coraline was one of the surprises of the first half of the year, later getting an Oscar nomination in the animated category. Empire writes that Selick is finally getting the kind of recognition he's long deserved, and he has signed a long-term deal to make his movies his way at, of all places, Disney. It's interesting to note that Selick used to work at Disney about 30 years ago. He also directed his first film at Disney, the Tim Burton-produced Nightmare Before Christmas. But as computer animation became the big thing, Selick's stop-motion magic became a painstaking hassle for Disney. "I'll quote [former Disney boss] Dick Cook right after James And The Giant Peach was finished. He said, 'We don't believe this is a viable medium anymore, and we're not going to do it'," Selick remembers. "A few years later they shut down 2-D. It's great that both of those things are back." He was lured back by John Lasseter, the Pixar chief and also the head of Disney animation, with the guarantee that he'll have final say over his own projects. He'll also be able to lean on the imagineers at Pixar while still making his stop-motion films. Applause all the way around.

Comments

[Ken]

Disney should learn to make good cartoons again, instead of hiring outsiders to do the work for them. Let's just hope Selick doesn't get the boot like Zemeckis when his next film "underperforms," at least in the eyes of the Mouse.