Henry Selick repurchases canceled film rights to THE SHADOW KING from Disney

Henry Selick he has directed some truly amazing and intriguing films. The nightmare before Christmas, James and the giant peach, Coralineand more recently Wendell & Wild they were all brought to us by Selick, although it is often overlooked Tim Burton.

Selick recently caught up with Double Toasted on YouTube to talk about her career and claimed to have repurchased the rights to The Shadow King from Disney. The film seemed doomed to fail, suffering from budget problems and creative differences with a studio that didn’t know how to handle the film. You would think after seeing Coraline they would know what they were doing The Shadow Kingbut Selick describes the film this way:

Guess what? I got the rights back from Disney and maybe if … [Wendell & Wild] it’s considered a hit, maybe I’ll revive The Shadow King … It would be different, it would be like my original story, which they said they loved, but then it changed everything … in my mind it was some kind of darker-toned Dumbo. You know, Dumbo is teased about his big ears and it turns out, ‘my god, that elephant can fly’, well this was a kid with misshapen hands and maybe they’re not as cute as big ears and this was their problem, but it’s a really messed up thing. A living shadow girl will teach him how to use those hands to not only create the biggest hand shadows in the world, but also hand shadows that can come to life. I thought it was a good story and I still think so.

It looks like it could be a really fun and quirky movie to watch, given Selick’s stop motion style. The cast originally included Jaden Betts, Brendan Gleeson, Jeffrey TamborAnd Catherine O’Hara which is a great cast but may not be the cast for the final film if the project is able to move forward. Hopefully the initial success of Wendell & Wild can help push The Shadow King towards being done.

Source: ScreenRant