In an interview with Sci Fi Wire, Henry Selick, director of the upcoming fantasy film Monkeybone, said that he talked with a real coma patient before he helmed the movie, about a cartoonist who falls into a coma and encounters his own creations. "I interviewed a coma victim who was in a coma for a year," Selick said in an interview. "She felt very much that her spirit was alive and stuck between life and death, that her feet were nailed to the ground. It was very convincing. I think that there's very much going on when people are in a coma."

In Monkeybone, Brendan Fraser plays a cartoonist on the verge of great success who has a serious accident that leaves him in a coma. In his mind, he enters a limbo world called Downtown, where other coma spirits reside. One of his cartoon creations, a monkey, becomes his nemesis and his ally as Fraser struggles to regain control of his body before doctors pull the plug.

Several different animation styles are involved in the movie, an eclectic mix of stop-motion animation, computer animation and live action to create Downtown and its denizens. The look of the film may bring memories of Selick's earlier films with Tim Burton, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Selick says, "The world we go to, Downtown, is not Halloweentown [from Nightmare], but it is a run-down carnival with perpetual night-time. Instead of all animated creatures, there are a lot of people in costumes, but with extreme designs. But there is a similarity in the look of the ... films, [as will] probably anything I do that's set in an imaginary world . ... But there are nightmares [in Monkeybone] that we see that are very different. They're funny and goofy and very creepy. They're shot in black and white, simply conceived, but they have a lot of power. They're very different from what you may have seen in my work previously."

Monkeybone is based on the graphic novel Dark Town, written by Kaja Blackley and illustrated by Vanessa Chong. The film has altered the comic's storyline and added a great deal of humor, Selick said. "I think I've always been interested in other worlds that coexist ... and the original comic had a really fantastic style and look to it, by Vanessa Chong, the illustrator," Selick said. "And it was also very clean and simple. It's become more complex, and her work doesn't really remain. But graphically, it was pure. ... I also felt that the story premise--you look at someone in a coma, you don't think of their spirit having a consciousness and probably think you're doing them a favor by pulling the plug. ... But the story is that the spirit is very much alive and desperately trying to get back into the body."

Monkeybone opens on February 23.

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