Needless to say, it sounds like Selick was given a lot of creative control over the movie. Although he has made some great movies with the support of Disney and Laika, this level of creative control is apparently something he has not been familiar with. According to Selick, he had a fair amount of control over his directorial debut, 1993’s “A Nightmare Before Christmas,” potentially due to producer Tim Burton personally seeking him out. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a similar experience for his follow-up, 1996’s “James and the Giant Peach.”

“Disney got a lot more involved,” he explained, “and suddenly a lot more energy was being sucked up into the politics of it.”

That, combined with the creative flip-flopping of 2001’s “Monkeybone,” is what eventually drew Selick to the burgeoning LAIKA. Given the studio’s relationship with the independent-leaning Focus Features and not a more commercial distributor like Disney or 20th Century Fox (which the former now owns), it’s easy to see why the director was interested in working with a new studio for “Coraline.”

“They supported me very well. They maybe didn’t know any better, but it was great,” Selick said. “The biggest pushback was from distributors, Focus Features … they wanted it to be like a regular cartoon.”

While this created some tension between Selick and the producers from Focus, don’t expect a movement to #ReleaseTheSelickCut to form any time soon. He maintained that he still received a lot of creative support while working on “Coraline.”