So far in the promotional history for Laika Studios’ new film The Boxtrolls, we’ve had a short teaser and a longer, behind-the-scenes-meets-footage-snippets trailer. Today brings another new look at the film, but still little idea of the characters themselves, with scenes set to a cover of Elvis Presley’s ‘(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care’ by Cee Lo Green. Check it out over at Yahoo.
The story, adapted from Alan Snow’s book Here Be Monsters, introduces the titular beasties who live underneath the charming streets of a small, quirky town and who crawl out of the sewers at night to steal what the townspeople hold most dear: their kids. At least, that’s the legend the townspeople have always believed. In truth, the creatures are a community of lovable oddballs who are raising as one of their own an abandoned and orphaned human boy named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright).
When the Boxtrolls are targeted by a villainous exterminator bent on eradicating them, Eggs must venture aboveground to save them, where he teams with an adventurous young girl to save not only the Boxtrolls but also the soul of his hometown. This "steampunk, Victorian, Monty Python-world seemed perfect for the look of stop motion,” director Anthony Stacchi tells Yahoo movies. "You can’t ask for better characters to animate in stop motion than guys who live in magical boxes that pop in and out of the top of."
That said, the creation of the main characters was a challenge for the team, according to co-director Graham Annable: "Their arms and legs have to be able to come out and go in separately at different speeds, and their heads need to disappear inside, and at the same time, they need to be capable of all the range of movement of any kind of a normal, human puppet."
With the voices of Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Toni Collette, Jared Harris and Tracy Morgan on board, we’ll see (and hear) the fruit of their labours when Boxtrolls hits cinemas on September 12.