Phil Knight's animation factory Laika is getting started extra early on promoting its second feature, ParaNorman. The follow-up to Coraline doesn't have the Neil Gaiman name recognition factor built in; it's an original concept about a little boy who's a "ghoul whisperer." So 11 months before the movie's August 2012 premiere, the Portland studio has launched its first ParaNorman teaser trailer just in time for Halloween.
It's a terrific trailer: creepy and funny and wordless, with only folk singer Donovan's song "Season of the Witch" as soundtrack. The plot remains obscure (though we've been told it's "a sweet comedy about a boy who communes with his dead grandmother and who must take on a small army of misguided zombies").
Old-school PDX movie trivia: "Season of the Witch" is the same song Gus Van Sant used in the closing credits of To Die For.
WWeek 2015