Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach) is attached to direct a film version of the children’s novel The Wall and the Wing for the independent animation company Vinton Studios according to a Variety story reported by ComingSoon.net. In part one of an interview with Animation Magazine [paid subscription required], Selick talks about the many projects on his plate.

On the CG-animated short film Moongirl: “We’re half-way done with animation… It’s looking great. We’ve got a few rendered-out shots that look fantastic. We’ll probably be wrapping up in June. It doesn’t look anything like Chris Van Allsburg, which they tried to do in The Polar Express, but I am going for a storybook look. A lot of CG tends to be clean. That’s what it does well. So we’re trying to add textures, dirt, tone and good, clear design… In my mind, it’s what The Nightmare Before Christmas did for stop-motion… This, in a much smaller way being a short film and all, is a pretty bold step for CG”.

On The Wall and the Wing: “It’s an alternate version of New York where there are clear differences between the world we know and this world. While Harry Potter has more traditional magic stuff with dragons and dark forces, this is more modern wizardry but certainly in the same general vein. The most attractive thing to me is how funny it is… It’s also a mystery. These kids have lost their memories at this orphanage and, in trying to discover who they are, they become fast friends and ultimately learn that they’re really at opposite sides of a particular game… It’s one of these projects that could have gone live-action, but I just think it’s actually going to reach a broader audience and just work better [in animation]… The tradition here is stop-motion, but we’re moving into CG… But I wouldn’t say right now definitively which way it would go. Probably CG. I’m still a great believer in stop-motion and will continue to push for that for the right project. But for this one, the scale feels bigger and feels more like a CG world. With stop-motion, I generally think that smaller, more confined worlds work better”.

Also on tap for Selick is the stop-motion feature adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and an animated version of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.