A recent job posting on Creativeheads.net has revealed that Coraline director Henry Selick is next directing the 3D stop-motion feature ShadeMaker for the recently launched Shademaker Productions. It’s second new company for Selick in the past few years.
He helped found Laika, through which he made Coraline, but left when his contract was up and he’d had difficulty finding a new project and apparently wasn’t happy heading up their feature department. While not entirely clear whether Shademaker is part of the deal Selick signed last year to make movies with Disney/Pixar, with Lou Romano (Up, Ratatouille) onboard and a MissionLocal story about Disney creating a studio for the movie in San Francisco, it appears it is.
Nothing about the storyline for ShadeMaker is known at this point. The new studio is being described as a company that wants to make scary movies for kids, and therefore seems to be taking the place of Double Dare You Films, a venture Disney tried to get going with Guilermo Del Toro to make films if that ilk, but which eventually fell through. “Cinderbiter (the company name on the job posting, before it changed to Shademaker) is a new stop-motion company whose mandate is to make great, scary films for young ‘uns with a small, tight-knit crew who watch each other’s backs. Joining Henry Selick on Cinderbiter’s first production will be veteran team members Eric Leighton and the celebrated production designer, Lou Romano. That’s right – Lou Romano!”
More about ShadeMaker is expected to be revealed in the very near future.