Trailer for “Kubo and the Two Strings” Is Here

LAIKA and Focus Features, the studios behind the animated films Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls, have released the trailer for the fourth animated feature film, Kubo and the Two Strings. Travis Knight, who won the Annie Award for Character Animation in a Feature Production for ParaNorman, is making his directorial debut and is working with an original story by Shannon Tindle (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends), written by Chris Butler (ParaNorman), with screenplay by Marc Haimes.

LAIKA, with its studios located in Oregon, have created masterful animation with it’s method of blending 3D stop motion along with CG, resulting in a hybrid that has the texture of 3D stop motion, but with the fluidity of computer animation. This technique is perfectly suited for this film, which ComingSoon.net describes as, a sweeping, swashbuckling adventure set in a mythical ancient Japan.

The cast for this film includes Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron, Rooney Mara, Ralph Fiennes, Brenda Vaccaro, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, George Takei, and Game of Thrones Rickon Stark, Art Parkinson.

In the epic fantasy, scruffy, kindhearted Kubo ekes out a humble living while devotedly caring for his mother in their sleepy shoreside village. It is a quiet existence – until a spirit from the past catches up with him to enforce an age-old vendetta. Suddenly on the run from gods and monsters, Kubo’s chance for survival rests on finding the magical suit of armor once worn by his fallen father, the greatest samurai the world has ever known. Summoning courage, Kubo embarks on a thrilling odyssey as he faces his family’s history, navigates the elements, and bravely fights for the earth and the stars.

Here is the trailer.

So how does this look to you? Will you be going out to see this? Are we beginning to see a new level of animation that might actually challenge the mighty Pixar Studios and others that make computer animated movies?

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment in the section below!