Tim Burton makes a return to stop motion. In 1982 he debuted with Vincent. He followed that up with the critically acclaimed The Nightmare Before Christmas, followed by “James And The Giant Peach.” Now he is at it again with Corpse Bride.

Burton has called on his old friend and collaborator Johnny Depp to provide the voice of the main character Victor Van Dort. Victor finds himself unwittingly wedded to a corpse bride (voiced by Helena Bonham). The problem for Victor is that he already has a living love interest in Victoria (Emily Watson), thus setting the stage for a Burtonesque strange love triangle involving two women, one dead and one alive, wanting the same guy.

Corpse Bride‘s puppet team started working on the project 18 months before actual shooting of the scenes began. This added time allowed them to work out any kinks that might arise in character movement during the actual shoot.

Burton, a master at stop motion filming combines still cameras with the newer techniques of CGI to create a beautiful cohesion of flawness stop motion cinema.

Listen for the voices of some big show-biz names like Albert Finney (Big Fish), Christopher Lee (Star Wars) and Tracey Ullman (Tracey Takes On) in this one.

The Corpse Bride trailer and release date information is available at the Warner Bros. Website.

For the complete story get the Starlog Magazine’s #339 October 2005 Edition at newsstands now.