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Screening Series: Ben Kingsley adds his own touch to ‘The Boxtrolls’ voice role

“The Boxtrolls” director Anthony Stacchi, director Graham Annable and producer Travis Knight looked for a young British voice as their lead first (Isaac Hempstead Wright). They later built an orchestra of Boxtrolls around Wright.

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The new film “The Boxtrolls” is the latest from stop-motion animation company Laika and continues the off-beat tales from their earlier “Coraline” and “ParaNorman.” Adapted from Alan Snow’s book, “Here Be Monsters,” the new film involves a boy raised by an enclave of trolls who live in boxes. (Truth in advertising, for once.)

Directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, along with producer and lead animator Travis Knight, stopped by for a Q&A after a recent showing of the film as part of the Envelope Screening Series.

As the filmmakers were first looking to create the world of the film -- a “European-type locale,” as Stacchi put it -- they were trying to cast the young characters of Eggs (the boy) and Winnie, the girl who helps him. They took recordings of Isaac Hempstead Wright and Elle Fanning from other movies and interviews and placed them against preliminary images, concerned with the emotions and tone of the voice rather than what they were actually saying.

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Realizing their voices worked well together, they then filled the rest of the cast.

“You build the band around them,” said Stacchi.

Besides Hempstead Wright and Fanning, the voice cast of “The Boxtrolls” also features Jared Harris, Toni Collette, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, Simon Pegg and Tracy Morgan.

For the role of Archibald Snatcher, the story’s villain, the team reached out to Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley.

“He was at the top of our list for the villain, but I don’t think any of the three of us thought he would take on the project,” said Annable. “So when he did it, we were like, ‘OK, we better get our A-game on here.’”

“He’s one of the greatest actors who ever lived and we’re a rinky-dink stop-motion outfit in the Pacific Northwest,” said Knight. (Although Laika, of which Knight is president, is a two-time Oscar nominee for animated feature, so maybe not so rinky-dink.)

Knight added that Kingsley had the unusual idea to record his voice-work while reclining to have the gluttonous character’s voice seem as if it was coming from his belly. While they all assumed they would essentially humor him and then record it correctly, they were wowed by the results.

Added Knight, “It was not at all what we expected but once we heard it, it was perfect.”

Follow Mark Olsen on Twitter: @IndieFocus

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