Despite the fact that Frankenweenie has been such a big news item at Comic Con this year, they are not the only claymation film on its way to theaters. It isn’t even the one I’m looking forward to the most. That honor goes to Paranorman and today, the cast and crew took the stage at hall H to talk about the film and answer questions. In attendence were Directors Sam Fell and Chris Butler, LAIKA head Travis Knight, and actors Kodi Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Also in attendence were several thousand fans who all laughed their butts off for almost the entire time. Here are some highlights from the panel:
– Butler said that he’s been working on Paranorman on and off for 16 years, but it has been a “proper” project for three years.
– The fims influences include Scooby Doo, The Goonies and Ghostbusters, and a lot of horror movies that Butler says he should not have watched as a child.
– They described the films as “George Romero and “Ray Harryhausen on bath salts.”
– Anna Kendrick was Kendrick said she was really nervous because she’s always wanted to voice an animated character but she’s not great in ADR
They also talked about how they worked with the advanced technology and how it helped them in the movie, Mainly, instead of having sculpt everything from scratch, they could actually get some of it through 3D printing. This helped them greatly when it came to getting really nuanced expressions on character faces.
On a side note, Mintz-Plasse was asked about Kick Ass 2 and he said:
“it’s looking really close that it’s going to happen” and revealed that they’re hopefully going to start shooting in September.