Box of Brilliance

A new trailer for LAIKA's The BoxTrolls has unexpectedly arrived!

This is no ordinary trailer either, and I must say, distributor Focus Features made something truly cool here! Rather than going for a stupid trailer that is a hodgepodge of antics and kid-centric jokes (like ParaNorman's near-disastrous trailer), they instead decided to craft something that could help audiences appreciate the beauty of stop motion animation and LAIKA's work in general. No dialogue or announcers, just a song and footage of the animators and artists at work… What more could you ask for?

Anyways, it's always staggering to see how much goes into their films and it's also a nice callback to the days when Disney would put behind-the-scenes footage in their trailers for their films in the 1990s. Showing the audience small bits of what goes into making animated features is such a great idea for trailers, and the fact that they're doing this for a stop motion film makes me very happy.

Now hopefully the full trailer, which should explain the story and whatnot, will make the film look like something worth seeing and not a bogus kiddie flick that's too scary for kiddies but yet too silly for adults. ParaNorman would've been the hit it should've been had it not been advertised that way, so hopefully The BoxTrolls is LAIKA's deserved box office break out. It's high time a film like this does well and changes the game for mainstream feature animation.

What did you think of the trailer? Great idea? Or would you have preferred to have seen more story-based stuff? Sound off below!

Out of the Box

LAIKA's third film, The BoxTrolls, is not due out until the autumn of next year... But that's not stopping Focus Features from getting the word out right now with a teaser! Despite what I may think of the way they advertise LAIKA's films, I will commend them for actually drumming up buzz a year and a half before the studio's next film even opens.

Since Universal's international distribution arm wants to be unfair and block it from YouTube in your country, you'll have to head over to iTunes to give it a watch for the time being...

Taking the Pixar route, this teaser shows us a fun little set of jokes, the setting and the BoxTrolls themselves. This will probably not be in the finished film. Visually, it's a lot like ParaNorman with its unconventional human designs, fun troll designs and the jagged, asymmetrical architecture. I absolutely loved that building style in ParaNorman. In this Victorian setting, it looks wonderful and refreshing. Aside from the usual lovely animation, this teaser is already notable (and soon, it'll be controversial) for its overt nods to same-sex couples.

LAIKA already got heat for a particular reveal in ParaNorman (which I won't spoil for you if you haven't seen it), so I imagine that this film will get some flack right off the bat. LAIKA isn't afraid to do this, though, and good for them I say. Being a studio whose films don't get the really wide audience that most other animated films get, they can somewhat slip under the radar with something like this. It begs the question: When will other studios do that? Or something similar?

All that aside, this is a great little teaser and the film is going to be another gem. LAIKA showed us with two back-to-back masterpieces that they a "new Pixar" of sorts, a studio that's going to try new things whilst also delivering good films. Their films may not be box office smashes, but they are a refreshing break from a lot of the animated films that litter the landscape today.

Reclaiming The Spot

Though it was kind of expected, LAIKA's The Boxtrolls will be opening nearly a month ahead of its last planned release date. The stop motion/computer animation hybrid is now set to open on September 26, 2014... Oddly enough, that very date was the first one distributor Focus Features had chosen despite the fact that Sony Pictures Animation had their Popeye film coming out the same day.

The Boxtrolls was then moved to October 17, 2014, which was a decent spot for it. Sony has delayed Popeye, which should be out in 2016 since they have two films coming out in 2015 (sequels to their biggest hits, no less). With that out of the way, I was wondering if anything would take the spot... Early, I had predicted that Henry Selick's The Shadow King would finally nab a release date and take that spot. But now, LAIKA is dominating it again.

Anyways, it's great to see that we're going to get this film a little earlier than expected. With this release date and good marketing, it could be LAIKA's first big hit... Something that even outgrosses Coraline even... But I'm probably being too hopeful here.