Acting for Two: Every voice actor whose character has real-world and Other World versions, except for Other Wybie, whom the Other Mother renders mute because Coraline finds the real Wybie obnoxious.
Approval of God: Neil Gaiman, the book's author, outright encouraged the use of creative license in the film, and by all accounts was very pleased with the final product.
Breakthrough Hit: For Laika Animation themselves, whose success with the film led to closing their CG feature division entirely to focus entirely on their stop motion division.
Cast the Runner-Up: Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were supposed to voice each other's parts, with the short, chubby Miss Spink having a deep voice, and the long, slender Miss Forcible having a high-pitched voice. They were switched because Henry Selick thought the characters were funnier that way.
Copiously Credited Creator: Henry Selick served as the writer, producer, director, production designer, and lyricist (for Other Spink and Forcible's song).
Argentina and Mexico: Coraline and the Secret Door
Brazil: Coraline and the Secret World
Bulgaria: Coraline and the Secret of the Mirror
Croatia: Coraline and the Secret Mirror
Finland: Coraline and Another Reality
Greece: Coraline: The House in the Fog
Italy: Coraline and the Magic Door
Japan: Coraline and the Button Witch
Russia: Coraline in the Land of Nightmares
Kids' Meal Toy: Hardee's had a set of four toys in 2009. There was the Tic Tac Toe game, the Magic Mirror, Coraline's Key, and the "War of the Worlds" card game.
Network to the Rescue: Initially, no studio showed interest in the film. Then producer Bill Mechanic (who also believed in James Cameron and Titanic at Fox) showed interest and jumped on as a financier, which got the film made and a distributor in Universal. The movie became a Sleeper Hit, director Henry Selick got a deal at Pixar, and it got Laika a decent distribution deal at Universal, under Focus Features, for its next three films.
Permanent Placeholder: The scene with Other Spink and Other Forcible was originally meant to have a song written by They Might Be Giants (as was a lot of the rest of the film, but that's another matter). After hearing the placeholder song the writers had come up with, John and John said it was good enough and there was no reason to replace it.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: In a nasty case of a trending tag being taken as truth, somebody once brought up the hypothetical idea of a live-action remake of the film on Twitter... which got it on trending, leading people to actually believe a live-action remake would be made in spite of no such news being reported.
The Red Stapler: The Detroit Zoo fountain snowglobe was eventually produced as an actual zoo souvenir after the film was released.
Sleeper Hit: When the film came out, stop-motion animation was considered dead and the film was expected to die a quick death at the box office against The Pink Panther 2 and My Bloody Valentine 3D. After a better than expected opening, the film kept on going, and ended up becoming the second-highest grossing stop-motion animated film of all time in the United States.
The movie was originally planned as a musical with ten songs written by They Might Be Giants, but this idea was discarded in favor of a more conventional movie, although one of their songs (the Other Father's number) does remain in the film, and the band has said they will release the other songs written for the movie in other projects ("Careful What You Pack", for example, wound up on their 2007 album The Else).
At one point, there were plans to use two different animation techniques for the film: stop motion for the real world, and CGI for the Other World. However, when tests of this approach were attempted, the stop motion looked much more visually interesting than the CG, making the dull world Coraline leaves seem much more interesting than the thrilling world she enters. They tried a switch, with CG for the real world and stop motion for the Other World, but that didn't look right either, so they settled on using entirely stop motion.
Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were originally cast as Miss Spink and Miss Forcible respectively, but Henry Selick was dissatisfied with the end result, so he swapped their roles around. Everyone agreed that the change was ultimately for the better.
If Keith David's acting in the recording booth is any indication, the Cat's non-speaking vocalizations were originally going to be done by the man himself. This isn't apparent in the final film where the Cat makes traditional feline sounds when not talking.
Video Game Trivia
Adaptation First: The video game's release predates the animated movie release by a whole week.
No Export for You: The two games were not released in Japan despite the DS game being developed by a Japanese company.
The Other Darrin: While Coraline, Wybie, and the Cat's voices are all reprised, the rest have completely different voice actors.
Role Reprise: Some of the voice cast from the movie return to voice their respective characters from the game, most notably Dakota Fanning (Coraline) and Keith David (the Black Cat).
A entire level based around the scene where Coraline goes with her mother to the store was planned but was cut entirely.
There were also plans to have the player travel through the Other World portal on their own, allowing them to freely travel between the two worlds, but this was cut in the console version. It did make it into the DS version, however.
There was actually a completely orchestrated score written by Mark Watters that ultimately went unused in the console game. Some of these tracks were replaced with MIDI files instead.
The medal Mr. Bobinsky wears is one that was awarded to Chernobyl liquidators for their efforts in the clean up campaign. In fact, his efforts in that disaster are supposedly why his skin is blue.
According to the crew, the mice circus scene was indisputably the most difficult scene in the entire movie to construct and film.
There was a lot of discussion about the famous Other Spink and Other Forcible performance, specifically exactly how much they could get away with. Selick said he convinced the company to let it slide because Other Forcible was not only covering her naughty bits, but was also spoofing a socially acceptable and famous painting.
Author Neil Gaiman discussed the adaptation with director Henry Selick even before the book was published. He and his daughter Maddy Gaiman are fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
This was the first stop-motion movie to be produced for 3D. As the side-by-side camera rig commonly used in live-action 3D shoots cannot fit into the miniature sets, not to mention is unable to create the desired results on such a small scale, the camera crew solved this by building a camera rig that slightly moved the camera sideways after each frame and took a second picture.
Most of the non-stop-motion effects are either hand-drawn or shot in live action, making use of as few CG effects as possible.
Wybie Lovat was not in the original book, and was added following producer Bill Mechanic's suggestion. The decision is approved by Neil Gaiman.
The film originally held the world record for longest Stop Motion film, being 1 hour and 40 minutes long. This record was surpassed by Kubo and the Two Strings by a minute several years later.
invoked When Neil Gaiman first gave Coraline to his editor, she didn't want to publish it because she thought kids would be too scared reading it. So he made a bet and had her read the book to her daughter. The editor's daughter apparently loved it, and so they published that draft. Years later, at an anniversary conference for the book, Gaiman ran into the daughter. He thanked her and told her the story how she was the real reason the book got published. The daughter laughed and admitted to him "Oh, I was terrified by the story. But it was so interesting that I lied to my mom so I could learn what happened next!"
Throw It In!: The heroine's name was originally "Caroline", but Gaiman misspelled it, and found himself liking the typo more than the original name. This became a running gag within the book, with characters mispronouncing Coraline's name as "Caroline" and Coraline exasperatedly correcting them.
about that lack of research. To make a long story short, Coraline was billed as "From the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas", who many people erroneously believe to be Tim Burton, when he actually produced the latter film.