Coraline is gothic in tone, stop-motion in style, and definitely weird, but did Tim Burton make Coraline? Since Coraline’s release, the movie has been mistakenly associated with The Nightmare Before Christmas creator and Corpse Bride director Tim Burton. It’s true that Coraline shares a lot of things in common with many Tim Burton movies like Frankenweenie — it’s a kid-friendly, stop-motion horror film with the gothic vibe Tim Burton has become synonymous with over his decades-long career. Despite those similarities, Tim Burton actually had nothing whatsoever to do with Coraline's production. Coraline wasn't directed by Tim Burton, but Henry Selick.

The filmmaker behind Coraline is Wendell & Wild director Henry Selick, but this hasn't stopped the beloved adaptation of the Neil Gaiman comic from being falsely attributed to Burton by far too many people. Despite the fact Selick is clearly credited as the Coraline director, the misconception that Tim Burton directed it still persists. The issue appears to trace back to The Nightmare Before Christmas. The classic stop-motion spook-fest was released in 1994 and is based on a book by Burton. Tim Burton didn't direct Coraline, but sadly for the legacy of the phenomenal Henry Selick, the comparisons between them don't stop there.

Henry Selick's Work Often Gets Mistaken For Tim Burton's

The Director Has Undeservedly Lived In Burton's Shadow

It's unfortunate that so many people mistakenly thinks that Tim Burton directed Coraline, and it must be frustrating for the Coraline director to have his movies attributed to Burton so frequently. Like Coraline, many people don't know Tim Burton didn't direct Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack Skellington's holiday escapades were, rather ironically, also helmed by Coraline director Henry Selick (in his feature filmmaking debut, no less). So, when posters for Coraline bore a tagline proclaiming that the movie was “from the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas,” many wrongly believed this was referring to Tim Burton.

The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline aren’t the only Henry Selick movies plagued by the misconception, either. When Selick released his second feature, James And The Giant Peach, in 1996, it too was mistakenly assumed to be a Burton-helmed movie, even though his only involvement with the Roald Dahl adaptation was as a producer. Given how creepy the 1996 movie adaptation is and how unique the animation is, audiences once again wrongly attributed the film to Tim Burton.

In 2022 Netflix released Selick’s first feature film since Coraline. Titled Wendell & Wild, the dark fantasy film featuring Selick’s trademark stop-motion animation and the voices of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as the titular Wendell and Wild – a pair of scheming demon brothers who escape from hell. It bears a ing stylistic resemblance to The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, but thankfully stands apart from Selick's former animated features. Thus far Wendell & Wild appears to have avoided the Tim Burton comparisons. A good thing too, since Selick's is long overdue credit for his movies (instead of falsely praising Tim Burton).

The Coraline Confusion Exposes A Tim Burton Problem

Henry Selick's Movies Wouldn't Be Mistaken For Burton's If Burton Wasn't Formulaic

While Tim Burton is a wildly talented director with an illustrious career, the fact that people think Coraline is a Tim Burton movie proves that he has a problem on his hands. The Wednesday director has such a distinctive style that anything even vaguely resembling his movies, especially animation, seems to get mistakenly credited to him. However, this isn't a problem that needs to be solved by movies like Coraline or directors like Selick — it's a setback for Burton himself. Over the years, Burton's movies have become tonally near-identical. It surprises many to learn just how short the list of animated movies he's directed actually is.

Tim Burton has only directed two stop-motion movies, Frankenweenie and Corpse Bride, although obviously, the full title of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas puts it in the "Animated Tim Burton Movie" category too. The gothic look and feel of these stories have been repeated across pretty much all of Tim Burton's movies, from Sweeney Todd to his widely hated Planet Of The Apes reboot. While it speaks volumes for his success that "Tim Burton Movie" is basically now a subgenre in its own right, it also raises questions about his artistic versatility.

There's a fine line between developing a distinctive style and being a one-trick pony. He's also not got a perfect track record, with outings like the aforementioned 2001 Planet Of The Apes and 2012's Dark Shadows failing to match anywhere near the acclaim of Edward Scissorhands or Beetlejuice, despite all four being unforgivingly Burtonesque in style. However, his nonexistent Coraline ties aside, Burton has once again received critical acclaim for his work on Netflix's Wednesday, and no Tim Burton movie project is more promising than the Beetlejuice 2 movie.

How Coraline Is Different From Tim Burton Movies

There Are Several Aesthetic Subtleties That Set It Apart From Tim Burton

Tim Burton didn't direct Coraline, and the only reason many mistakenly think he did is that the movie is a creepy stop-motion adventure with a similar general vibe to The Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie. However, there are a few signs in the animation style and character design of Coraline that are signs Burton had no involvement. Every stop-motion Tim Burton movie is based on character designs the director creates himself, and none of his signature style is present in the Coraline characters.

Whether it's The Corpse Bride or movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas which Burton was the creative force behind but didn't actually direct, stop-motion Tim Burton characters all share a few traits. The most notable of this is their eyes. Human characters in animated movies directed by Tim Burton almost all have round, circular eyes. What's more, their eyes also tend to be surrounded by dark circles, giving the characters a gaunt appearance. None of the characters in Coraline looked like this.

Even Coraline's father, who perpetually had bags under his eyes and heavy eyelids, didn't have the typical Tim Burton borders to his eyeballs. It's a subtle difference, but an important one. There was also much more variation in general between the design of the human characters in Coraline. In Burton's stop-motion movies, the human characters all appear cut from the same aesthetic cloth, whereas Coraline uses a much wider variety of skull structures, eye shapes, and other facial aspects. It's a subtle difference between Coraline and movies directed by Tim Burton, but it's a notable one.

How Coraline Is Similar To Tim Burton Movies

The Other Mother Feels LIke Something Straight Out Of A Burton Story

While Henry Selick directed Coraline, there are certain elements of the movie that, it must be said, wouldn't feel out of place in a Tim Burton story. Coraline's antagonist, The Other Mother, is the strongest example of this. A demon who takes the form of children's parents and replaces their eyes with buttons is almost textbook Tim Burton, as he is (after all), the one who came up with such monstrosities as the Clown With The Tearaway Face from The Nightmare Before Christmas (even if he didn't direct it).

Of course, the key reason many casual viewers mistake Coraline for a Tim Burton movie is that it's creepy and animated in stop-motion, but Burton far from owns horror movies animated in this medium. The reason that many more astute viewers still mistake it for a Tim Burton story is that there are parallels between many of Coraline's ideas and Burton's work, at least in of aesthetic and general weirdness.

The story of Coraline comes from the Neil Gaiman book of the same name, and Gaiman invited Selick to direct the movie because he was a fan of Henry Selick's work on The Nightmare Before Christmas — a movie that came from a story and character designs created by Tim Burton. Given that this was the case, there is a link between Tim Burton's imagination and Coraline, albeit a tenuous and detached one, so it's understandable there's a few similarities.

Other Films That Get Confused For Tim Burton Movies

Anything Gothic Or Creepy Seems To Be Attributed To The Corpse Bride And Edward Scissorhands Director

Along with Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas, audiences have confused Burton for directing a number of other animated movies. 2009's 9 is a uniquely computer-animated movie about an apocalyptic war between humans and machines, and a living ragdoll is the key to humanity's salvation. The story is typically dark and the ragdoll is a typically quirky protagonist who can be found in almost every Burton-directed movie. However, Burton did produce the movie, and given that he has a huge fanbase, the filmmaker's name was used to promote the film, which didn't help the confusion.

It isn't just Coraline and other animated movies that audiences think Tim Burton directed, but live-action movies too. The most notable movie series that often gets mistaken for a Tim Burton project is the 1990s Addams Family movies. Both The Addams Family and Addams Family Values are directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, but they have the same gothic aesthetic as Beetlejuice, along with the creative practical effects, so it isn't surprising that viewers thought the 1991 movie was Burton's Batman follow-up. Ironically, Burton actually turned down The Addams Family after being offered to direct it.