Rebuilding Coraline

Rebuilding Coraline is a short documentary about the craft behind the puppets used in the 2009 stop-motion film Coraline. Made fifteen years after that film's release, it goes behind the scenes to show how new puppets of the title character were constructed, following the work that goes into building them.

The film runs 11 minutes and was released in August 2024. It comes from the animation studio Laika, which also produced the original Coraline. The documentary features Simon Thompson, Sid Tucker, Brian McLean, Jess Lynn, Oliver Jones and Anja Poland, all appearing as themselves and speaking to the technical and artistic work of puppet fabrication.

Because the short focuses on process rather than story, its subjects are the people who made the puppets and the methods they used. It is intended for viewers interested in how stop-motion animation is made, and in how a studio returns to a character years after the original production. As a documentary of this length, it serves as a companion piece to Coraline rather than a standalone narrative film, using the anniversary of the feature's release as the occasion to revisit the character's physical construction.