As Gaiman was finishing his novella, he met Selick and invited him to make a film adaptation, as Gaiman was a fan of Selick's other stop-motion works. When Selick thought that a direct adaptation would lead to "maybe a 47-minute movie", the story was expanded. Looking for a design different from that of most animation, Selick discovered the work of Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi and invited him to become the concept artist. Uesugi's biggest influences were on the color palette, which was muted in the real world and more colorful in the alternate universe. Production of the animation took place at a warehouse inHillsboro, Oregon.
Coraline premiered at thePortland International Film Festival on February 5, 2009, and was released theatrically in the United States on February 6 byFocus Features. The film was met with widespread acclaim from critics and grossed $126 million on its initial release. Several theatrical re-releases raised its box office total to $186 million, making it the third-highest-grossingstop-motion film of all time. The film wonAnnie Awards forBest Music, Best Character Design, and Best Production Design, and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at theAcademy Awards and theGolden Globes.
Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones and her parents, Charlie and Mel, move fromPontiac, Michigan, into the Pink Palace Apartments, an oldVictorian house inAshland, Oregon. While searching for an old well, she meets ablack cat and the landlady's grandson Wyborn "Wybie" Lovat, who gives her a rag doll that eerily resembles her. Since her parents are busy with work, Coraline entertains herself by exploring the house, discovering a small door with a brick wall behind it in the living room.
That night, she opens the door and finds that the brick wall has been replaced by a tunnel, which leads her to an "Other World", wherebutton-eyeddoppelgängers of her parents lavish her with delicious food and their attention. Upon waking in the morning, Coraline finds herself back in the real world, where Wybie recounts that his great-aunt disappeared when she was a child. Coraline then meets her neighbors: Sergei Alexander Bobinsky, an eccentric man who owns a mouse circus, and retiredburlesque actresses April Spink and Miriam Forcible, who warn her of impending danger in her future regarding the Other World.
Coraline returns to the Other World that night, where she meets Wybie's mute doppelgänger. When she returns yet again, the cat, who can travel between the worlds and is capable of speech, arrives and warns her about the Other World. The Other Mother offers for Coraline to stay in the Other World forever, on the condition of having buttons sewn onto her eyes. Horrified, Coraline desperately tries to return home, but she remains in the Other World. When Coraline tries to escape through the door, the Other Mother imprisons her in a dark room behind a mirror.
There, three ghost children, one of whom Coraline recognizes as Wybie's great-aunt, tell Coraline that the Other Mother is an evil entity called the "Beldam", who used rag dolls to spy on their unhappy lives and lure them into the Other World. They allowed her to sew buttons over their eyes and she subsequently robbed them of their souls. After Coraline promises to help the ghost children by retrieving their "eyes", the Other Wybie helps her escape through the passageway home.
Back in the real world, Wybie asks Coraline to return the doll, since it belonged to his great-aunt. She attempts to explain the situation to him, but he disbelieves her and runs out in fear. Coraline receives anadder stone from Spink and Forcible and, after the cat informs her that the Beldam has kidnapped her parents, the duo set out to rescue them. Knowing that the Beldam has a penchant for games, Coraline proposes a deal: if she finds her parents and the eyes of the ghost children, the Beldam will let them all go; if not, she will stay and accept the Beldam's offer.
As Coraline finds and collects each of the missing eyes using the adder stone, she frees the spirits of the ghost children and the Other World begins to fade until all three are collected and the entire dimension, except for the living room, eventually disintegrates. The Beldam, now in her truearachnid-like form, challenges Coraline to find her parents. Realizing they are trapped in a nearbysnow globe and that the Beldam will not honor her end of the deal, she throws the cat to distract her before seizing the snow globe and narrowly escaping through the door with the ghost children's help, amputating one of the Beldam's hands in the process. Coraline's parents return with no recollection of their capture and she warmly embraces them.
Later, the ghosts warn Coraline that the Beldam is still after the door's key. As Coraline heads toward the well to dispose of it, the Beldam's amputated hand sneaks into the real world and attempts to drag her back to the Other World. Wybie, having realized Coraline was telling the truth, comes to the rescue and vanquishes the hand before they both throw it and the key down the well. The next day, the Jones family hosts a garden party for the Pink Palace residents. Wybie brings his grandmother to the party and Coraline begins to tell her about her missing sister's fate.
DirectorHenry Selick met authorNeil Gaiman just as Gaiman was finishing the novelCoraline, which was published in 2002, and as Gaiman was a fan of Selick'sThe Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), he invited him to make a film adaptation. As Selick thought a direct adaptation would lead to "maybe a 47-minute movie", his screenplay had some expansions, such as the creation of Wybie, who is only mentioned in the novel as the boy who lived in the house before Coraline. The character was expanded in order to not make it seem like Coraline was talking to herself all the time. When looking for a design different from that of most animation, Selick discovered the work of Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi and invited him to become the concept artist. One of Uesugi's biggest influences was on the color palette, which was muted in reality and more colorful in the Other World, as inThe Wizard of Oz (1939).[6] Uesugi said: "at the beginning, it was supposed to be a small project over a few weeks to simply create characters; however, I ended up working on the project for over a year, eventually designing sets and backgrounds, on top of drawing the basic images for the story to be built upon."[7]
Coraline was staged in a 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m2) warehouse inHillsboro, Oregon.[5][8] The stage was divided into 50 lots,[9] which played host to nearly 150 sets.[5] Among the sets were three miniatureVictorian mansions, a 42-foot (12.8 m) apple orchard, and a model ofAshland, Oregon, including tiny details such as banners for theOregon Shakespeare Festival.[8] The Amazing Garden scene was the most complicated set created for the film. The hundreds of handmade flowers were created to grow and move accordingly when Coraline entered the garden.[10] More than 28 animators worked at a time on rehearsing or shooting scenes, producing 90–100 seconds of finished animation each week.[11] To capturestereoscopy for the 3D release, the animators shot each frame from two slightly apart camera positions.[6]
Every object on the screen was made for the film.[6] The crew used three3D printing systems from Objet in the development and production of the film. Thousands of high-quality3D models, ranging from facial expressions to doorknobs, were printed in 3D using the Polyjet matrix systems, which enable the fast transformation ofcomputer-aided design (CAD) drawings into high-quality 3D models.[12] The puppets had separate parts for the upper and lower parts of the head that could be exchanged for different facial expressions,[6] and the characters could exhibit over 208,000 facial expressions.[12] In the "Hidden Worlds: The Films of LAIKA" exhibit atSeattle'sMuseum of Pop Culture, the sign for "Replacing Faces" display said there were 207,336 possible face combinations for Coraline and 17,633 for her mother. Selick wanted to leave the seams in the characters' faces to show the handmade nature of the puppets, but Laika ownerPhil Knight requested that the seams be removed digitally.[13] There were 28 identical puppets of Coraline. Each one took 3–4 months to make and usually took 10 people to construct each one.[14] Computer artists composited separately shot elements together or added their elements, which had to look handcrafted, not computer-generated; for instance, the flames were done with traditional animation and painted digitally, and the fog was dry ice.[6]
At its peak, the film involved the efforts of 450 people,[5] including 30[8] to 35[5] animators and digital designers in the Digital Design Group (DDG), directed by Dan Casey, and more than 250 technicians and designers.[8] Principal photography took 18 months. One crew member,Althea Crome, was hired specifically to knit miniature sweaters and other clothing for the puppet characters, sometimes using knitting needles as thin as human hair.[5] A single garment could take anywhere from six weeks to six months to complete. The clothes also simulated wear using paint and afile.[6]
Coraline pays tribute toJoe andJerome Ranft. The late Joe Ranft was a previous collaborator and a major inspiration to director Henry Selick. The Ranft Brothers are the models for the "Ranft Moving Inc." movers at the start of the film.[15]
The soundtrack forCoraline features songs byBruno Coulais, with one ("Other Father Song") byThey Might Be Giants. The Other Father's singing voice is provided byJohn Linnell, one of the band's singers. The band was hired to write an entire soundtrack for the film, but according toJohn Flansburgh, the production team "wanted the music to be more creepy", and only one song was ultimately used.[16] Coulais's score was performed by theBudapest Symphony Orchestra and features choral pieces sung by the Children's Choir ofNice in anonsense language.[17] One of the choir members is coincidentally named Coraline.[17]Coraline won Coulais the 2009Annie Award for best score for an animated feature.
According to Paul Dergarabedian, a film business analyst with Media by Numbers, for the film to succeed it needed a box office comparable toWallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which had grossed $16 million its opening weekend and ended up grossing $125 million worldwide. Before the film's release, Dergarabedian thoughtLaika Studios "should be pleased" wasCoraline to make $10 million in its opening weekend,[8] in its US opening weekend, the film grossed $16.85 million, ranking third at the box office.[18] It made $15 million during its second weekend, bringing its U.S. total up to $35.6 million, $25.5 million of which came from 3D presentations.[19]
The film was re-released on August 14, 2023, grossing over $7 million over four days.[20][21] For its 15th anniversary, it was re-released the following year in 3D on August 16, 2024, and made $12.5 million in four days, finishing fifth at the box office.[21][22] By August 23, the 2024 re-release had grossed $29.2 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing re-release in the history ofFathom Events.[23][24] As of September 24, 2024, the re-release had grossed $52.4 million worldwide, bringing the film's lifetime total gross to $185.7 million worldwide.[3] The 15th anniversary re-release became the second highest grossing re-release of a film of all time in the UK. It also earned more than its initial box gross from 2009 release in Mexico.[25]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 279 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "With its vivid stop-motion animation combined with Neil Gaiman's imaginative story,Coraline is a film that's both visually stunning and wondrously entertaining."[26]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100 based on reviews from 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[27]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "a beautiful film about several nasty people" as well as "nightmare fodder for children, however brave, under a certain age."[28]David Edelstein ofNew York magazine said the film is "abona fidefairy-tale" that needed a "touch less entrancement and a touch more ... story."[29]A. O. Scott ofThe New York Times called the film "exquisitely realized", with a "slower pace and a more contemplative tone than the novel. It is certainly exciting, but rather than race through ever noisier set pieces toward a hectic climax in the manner of so much animation aimed at kids,Coraline lingers in an atmosphere that is creepy, wonderfully strange, and full of feeling."[30]
The film was released onDVD andBlu-ray in the United States on July 21, 2009, byUniversal Studios Home Entertainment. A 3D version comes with four sets of 3D glasses—specifically the green-magentaanaglyph image.Coraline was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on October 12, 2009. A 3D version of the film was also released on a two-disc Collector's Edition. The DVD opened to first-week sales of 1,036,845 and over $19 million in revenue. Total sales stand at over 2.6 million units and over $45 million in revenue.[4] A two-disc Blu-ray 3D set, which includes astereoscopic 3D on the first disc and ananaglyph 3D image, was released in 2011. A new edition fromShout! Factory under license from Universal was released on August 31, 2021.[37] The film was released on4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on December 13, 2022.[38]
The website forCoraline involves an interactive exploration game where the player can scroll through Coraline's world. It won the 2009Webby Award for "Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics", both by the people and the Webby organization. It was also nominated for the Webby "Movie and Film" category.[39] On June 16, 2008,D3 Publisher announced the release of avideo game based on the film. It was developed by Papaya Studio for theWii andPlayStation 2 and by Art Co. forNintendo DS. It was released on January 27, 2009, close to the film's theatrical release.[40] The soundtrack was released digitally February 3, 2009, byE1 Music, and in stores on February 24, 2009.
^"Backstage view (19th of 21 backlot production photos)".Los Angeles Times. August 7, 2008. Archived fromthe original on February 10, 2009. RetrievedFebruary 15, 2009.Backstage view of the facility in whichCoraline's stop-motion animation is filmed in Portland, Oregon. TheCoraline stage is divided into approximately 50 units separated by black curtains. Each unit contains a different set that is in the process of being dressed, lit, rigged, or shot.
^Khal; Herrera, Andy; Mattbraone; Serafino, Jason; Scarano, Ross; Aquino, Tara; Rodriguez, Karla (September 20, 2022)."The Best Animated Movies Of All Time".Complex. RetrievedMay 22, 2025.
