TJ: So Coraline is going into production first?

HS: So far, yes. But we’ll have to see how long it takes Wes to get his screenplay done, and where I am at that time. Hopefully I get to do both.

Published by HarperCollins, author Neil Gaiman and illustrator Dave McKean’s Coraline will come to the big screen via the wondrous animation of Henry Selick. © HarperCollins.

TJ: When the Coraline feature was announced, I read you had already done the adaptation when you got the rights. It sounds like you’ve been involved from the get-go.

HS: Yeah. It was set up with Bill Mechanic, and it was originally planned as a live-action film. So we had the option, but not the underlying book rights. So I went ahead and developed the screenplay, based on the book, with Bill’s input. Coming to Vinton, one of my primary goals was always to bring the project in. So they were aware of it, they liked it, and it took several months of negotiating and so forth to work things out. But one of the best things about bringing it here is Neil Gaiman is very pleased it’s going to be an animated film. I always felt that was the best place for it, versus live-action with effects.

TJ: So it will be akin to Nightmare Before Christmas, which was all animation, versus James and the Giant Peach, which was an animation/live-action split?

HS: Yeah. It’s going to be an all-animated feature.

TJ: When did you first read the book?

HS: I read the book almost four years ago, I’d say. The book had not been published, and wasn’t even finished when Neil came to me. He was close to finishing. But he’d worked on it for many years as a part-time project. It was inspired by his own daughter, and his relationship with her, being a very busy guy trying to write all the time. So I read it — it wasn’t even the galleys, but the close-to-finished novel — about four years ago, and took it to Bill Mechanic who’d recently set up as an independent producer after running Fox for a number of years. I convinced both him and Neil not only to let me be attached as director but to give me a crack at writing the screenplay.

TJ: I could see it as a stop-motion feature the moment I read about the Other Mother’s button eyes. When did you know you were going to direct it?

HS: Boy — I’d say within 20 pages. It just felt like, “Wow, this is the world I love and know.” I think I was very faithful to the book, and Neil’s pleased with the screenplay, but I definitely had to change some things totally. The book is very frightening at times, and quite creepy. I’ve tried to make it a little more spooky and fun while being very true to the material. I had to add another character. When you write a book you can have a lot of interior dialogue. So I needed to add something. And there was something that came from Bill Mechanic that was quite useful: I didn’t want the world to be so immediately off-kilter when she entered it, so I save the button eyes. They’re something that is revealed a little later. So it’s more of a Hansel and Gretel, this-is-the-best-place-in-the-world-to-be feeling, before the truth about that other world, that other version of Coraline’s life is seen.

TJ: It is a dark book. It’s comic, but it’s not a comedy.

HS: Yeah. Actually there’s a lot of humor, but it’s very dry. I mean, the talking cat is probably the funniest character, but he’s not going for laughs. So I tried injecting a little more humor, and a little more balance with the darkness. I mean, look — I want the dark and scary things to be really strong, but I don’t want people, especially kids, to feel like they’re going down a well and they’re not ever going to get out. It’s not trying to be like The Ring, an adult horror film. I call it a kids’ horror film. Something that scares the hell out of them but also gives them some good laughs.

Taylor Jessen is a writer living in Burbank. His latest comic is MANIFESTOR!, the tale of an inventory control clerk in an office supply warehouse who gets a radioactive paper cut, grows eleven stories tall and runs amok.