The Shadow King (Henry Selick) CANCELLED

[esteban²]

In 2010, a new project by Henry Selick, Oscar winning director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline, was announced. The Shadow King was his return to Disney, who co-financed Selicks' own 'stop motion studio' ShadeMaker (aka Cinderbiter). Ex-Pixar artist Lou Romano (Iron Giant, Monsters Inc, UP) was also part of the game.

Production started in 2011 and in April of 2012 Disney set the release date for the project, October 4, 2013. Still, there was nothing known about the story and no artwork shared. Meanwhile news got out Henry Selick also was going to helm The Graveyard Book for Disney, an adaption of the novel by Neil Gaiman (Coraline).

August 2012, after already working on it for a year by a team of enthusiastic stop motion animators, Disney shuts down the project and fires the entire staff, 150 people. Never happened before that far in production. According to Disney, the reason was that the project was behind shedule and wouldn't make the release date. According to Henry Selick, Disney panicked because of the bad box office results John Carter had a few months before and they were afraid they would not be able to sell the story. Suddenly, it was "too dark" for Disney CEO Jay Rasulo. Later, the same CEO stated Disney lost 50 million dollar on it.

Disney gave the permission for Selick to try and sell the movie to other studio's, so it could be saved. After negotiating with Laika, there was no agreement for the budget needed to finnish the movie. The studio that worked with Selick before on Coraline, thought it was to much of a risk. The Shadow King died.

By the end of 2012, Henry Selick made no secret out of the fact he was absolutely devistated by this and stated he kept hoping for the chance to finnish the movie. He shared it was a story about two brothers and The Shadow King would feature a lot of surrealistic scenes. According to him and lots of co-workers, the sets were spectacular, there even was a miniature version of whole (!) Central Park. The adaptation of The Graveyard Book also died because of this. Henry Selick hasn't done anything since this happened. He was attached to two or three other projects since, but it's very quiet around those. I sure hope this isn't the last we've heard of this very talented man.

So, why starting a thread on a cancelled movie? Well, for the very first time ever, we get to see the actual puppets by Victoria Rose, concept art by Katy Wu and maquettes / sculptures by Damon Bard. The story was about Hap (the one with the long sleeved sweater), an orphan who always tried to hide his strangely long fingers for the outside world. When he meets a living shadow-girl, she learns Hap how to use his fingers to create things in the shadow and bring them to life, his hand become powerful weapons. He will need those to save his brother Richard from being killed by a monster that plans to destroy New York.

Man, do I want to see that movie ! All that hard work for nothing. Enjoy ...

PS: Sorry for the poor grammar, English isn't my native language and I just tried to write my own summary of what happened. ;°)