For this week’s edition of The Digital Wire we’ve got a slim selection of offbeat titles from the film and television domains, including one influential horror classic. Below you’ll find info on several future home video releases complete with technical specs, release dates, and links to pre-order at Amazon. We would greatly appreciate it if you use those links to order because a small percentage of each order helps keep this website running at max power. The cover art for certain titles has yet to be finalized.

If you’ve seen 2009’s Coraline or 2012’s ParaNorman, then you know the kind of top-notch stop-motion animation work that Laika Entertainment can deliver. With their next feature, The Boxtrolls, they of course aim to set the bar higher.

While we can watch, enjoy, and appreciate a movie for what it is, not always do we really see what goes into making it. This is especially the case for stop-motion films, which require an unfathomable amount of work and detail to pull off successfully. With The Boxtrolls set to hit theaters this Friday, distributor Focus Features has unveiled a pair of new videos that will give you a greater appreciation of the art of stop-motion.

You can check them out below.

While we were in San Diego covering Comic-Con, our hearty team of weather-worn GoDs cranked out more than 60 articles. We were given a personal tour of Crimson Peak by director Guillermo del Toro. We piloted a virtual Jaeger from Pacific Rim. We covered four straight days of film and television panels in Hall H. We published tons of really great comic book news, casting announcements, all manner of awesome reveals, and so much more!

I took so many photos during the Hall H panels I attended at SDCC, that I’ve been updating our panel coverage articles with galleries since Sunday afternoon. And I’ve only now just finished processing my final lot of panel photos.

Below are nearly 400 additional panel photos that were taken over the course of my four days in Hall H, including Kingsman: The Secret Service with Colin Firth; the EW Women Who Kick Ass panel; The Maze Runner, the newest film in the Hitman franchise Agent 47; Michael Mann’s Blackhat with Chris Helmsworth; Let’s Be Cops; the newest stop-motion masterpiece from Laika, The Box Trolls; Paris-sewer found-footage horror, As Above So Below; Salma Hayek’s ‘The Raid,’ Everly; and an animated film that was completely off my radar pre-SDCC, but which I am now extremely looking forward to, The Book of Life.

Another pair of actors have joined the cast of Disney’s upcoming live-action/CG hybrid retelling of Rudyard Kipling‘s tale The Jungle Book.

First up is the great Christopher Walken, who has signed on to play the role of King Louie, the orangutan seeking the secrets of creating fire. Also joining the cast is Breaking Bad and Revolution star Giancarlo Esposito, who will play leader of the wolf pack Akela.

Many big name stars have been announced for The Jungle Book, Disney’s upcoming live-action take on the works of Rudyard Kipling and their own 1967 animated adaptation, including Scarlett Johansson, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, and Ben Kingsley. But all of those stars have signed on to play animal roles, leaving the most important role, the human child named Mowgli, still to be cast.

Now Disney and director Jon Favreau have found their Mowgli in Neel Sethi, a 10-year-old newcomer from New York whose only acting credit so far is a 2013 short titled Diwali.

You can see a picture of Seethi below.