Since its inception, animation studio LAIKA has pushed the envelope not only with its stop-motion animation style, but also with the compelling stories they tell, which includes the 2012 horror-comedy ParaNorman. The film was such a success that it scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature, and has earned a passionate following in the years since its release. Despite the film’s many accomplishments, it never earned a sequel of spinoff story, avenues which nearly every other animated adventure has earned in recent years, with star Kodi Smit-McPhee detailing that he believes LAIKA prefers to constantly move forward with their storytelling as opposed to reliving their past successes.
“No, that hasn’t been spoken about and, unfortunately, just from my experience working with LAIKA, I have watched their process of how they work, and I think this is healthy for anyone within the industry; they don’t like to get caught on their successes,” Kodi Smit-McPhee shared with ComicBook.com when asked about talks of continued adventures ever emerging. “And I’m not even speaking of ParaNorman, but I feel like Coraline was one of their greatest movies, but for them, they continue to go above and beyond. And we’ve seen them do that, I think, with two more movies recently, like Kubo [and the Two Strings] and [Missing Link]. They leave what they’ve done in the past and they just kind of excel tenfold.”
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He added, “So I’m not sure if we’ll ever see ParaNorman again. I think he will be kept in the beautiful little story it was, but we will continue to see amazing stories from the commitment of LAIKA to their craft.”
In the stop-motion film, the young Norman (Smit-McPhee) has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts, making him an outcast with his family and classmates. Norman’s abilities come in quite handy when the spirit of a witch starts to terrorize their small town, as he uses his powers to find clues to stop the entity.
The actor can soon be seen in the new sci-fi film 2067.
In the film, by the year 2067, Earth has been ravaged by climate change and humanity is forced to live on artificial oxygen. An illness caused by the synthetic O2 is killing the worlds’ population and the only hope for a cure comes in the form of a message from the future: “Send Ethan Whyte”. Ethan (McPhee), an underground tunnel worker, is suddenly thrust into a terrifying new world full of unknown danger as he must fight to save the human race.
Stay tuned for details on ParaNorman. 2067 hits select theaters, On Demand, and Digital HD on October 2nd.
Would you like to see another ParaNorman adventure? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!
