More on Selick’s Coraline

Director Henry Selick (Monkeybone) told SCI FI Wire that he’s writing a fantasy feature-film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s children’s novel Coraline, which he will also direct. “I’m going to try to get the first draft done before the [upcoming writers’ union] strike, so we can at least go out and do design work and get actors,” Selick said in an interview.

Coraline tells the story of a young girl who lives in a London duplex with her parents. She unlocks a forbidden door in her flat, which opens into a disturbing parallel world. “She finds a mirror image of her own life, except in that world, her formerly distinterested parents fawn over her,” Selick said. “But it turns out to be ultimately a terrible trap, and she has to not only escape from the trap, but also rescue her parents and other children who have become trapped in there. It’s a beautiful, elegant story. My main job is not to mess it up and keep it as close to the original, because it’s so beautifully written.”