Every filmmaker has a passion project that they hold onto for years in the hopes of making it. For “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Coraline” director Henry Selick, that film is an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 2013 modern fairy tale novel “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”.
Selick previously wrote 50 pages of a script for a movie of what he dubs Gaiman’s “best work” about an unnamed man who returns to his childhood home for a funeral and recalls his entanglement in a magical conflict.
Once he completed “Coraline” back in 2009, Selick says he met again with the film’s stop-motion animation studio LAIKA about “another Neil Gaman project” which was a planned ‘Ocean’ adaptation.
Speaking with EW this week to promote the release of his new film “Wendell & Wild,” the filmmaker says he would consider making another film at LAIKA and is hopeful that if “Wendell & Wild” is a success he can tackle a stop-motion animated ‘Ocean’:
“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.
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.
[Ocean] 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.”
“The Ocean at the End of the Lane” was previously adapted for the West End stage by the UK’s National Theatre (a trailer for that take is up on YouTube).
Selick’s “Wendell & Wild” follows an Afro-punk teen who’s tricked into summoning two demon brothers to the land of the living. That film is in cinemas this week and hits Netflix next Friday.
