Famed British comedy duo of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders have joined the voice cast of LAIKA Ent.’s upcoming stop-motion feature Coraline. The two will play eccentric neighbors to Dakota Fanning’s Coraline and her mother, voiced by Teri Hatcher, in the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s best-selling novel.
Directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach) and Mike Cachuela (LAIKA’s director of story), Coraline centers on a young girl who moves with her parents into a new home and discovers a portal to a parallel reality. French will voice the role of Miss Forcible and Suanders will be Miss Spink, rival former actresses who live in a basement flat and dabble in the occult. According to Selick, the actors were hand-picked by Gaiman to play his morbidly funny comic relief characters.
Original members of the U.K. comedy troupe The Comic Strip, French and Saunders created, wrote, and co-starred in the hit series Girls on Top and French & Saunders. The latter spun off the hugely successful series Absolutely Fabulous, which Saunders created and starred in.
LAIKA is producing Coraline in association with Pandemonium Films. Pandemonium president/CEO Bill Mechanic and LAIKA’s Mary Sandell are handling producing duties for the feature, which is being created at LAIKA’s Portland animation studio. Focus Features has worldwide distribution rights, and will also distribute the Tim Burton-produced feature version of Shane Acker’s Oscar-winning animated short, 9.
Currently in pre-production at LAIKA is Jack & Ben’s Animated Adventure, a CG-animated story of survival, brotherly love and grand adventure set in the animal kingdom. That film is written and directed by Jorgen Klubien, a veteran storyboard artist and designer whose credits include The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Lion King, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc. The company recently purchased the rights to U.K writer/illustrator Alan Snow’s best-selling children’s novel, Here Be Monsters.
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