Every Version of The Boxtrolls: a cross-media guide

From Cheesebridge to the Silver Screen

The Boxtrolls began as Here Be Monsters!, a massive, densely illustrated children's novel by British author and artist Alan Snow, published in 2005 after years of development. Set in the fictional Victorian town of Cheesebridge, it follows Eggs, a boy raised underground by box-wearing troll creatures, as he navigates the surface world of snobbish cheese-obsessed aristocrats and a scheming exterminator named Archibald Snatcher. The book is an extraordinary physical object: roughly 550 pages of Snow's own detailed pen-and-ink drawings packed alongside the prose, creating a world that reads more like a graphic novel crossed with a Victorian encyclopedia than a conventional children's book.

The property attracted Laika, the Portland stop-motion studio behind Coraline and ParaNorman, who acquired the rights and released an adaptation in 2014. Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi condensed the sprawling source material considerably, keeping the core characters and setting while streamlining the plot. The film was accompanied by a junior novelization and a pair of mobile tie-in games, neither of which extends the story in any meaningful way. Beyond that, the Boxtrolls world has not spread into series, sequels, or stage adaptations, making this one of the more contained cross-media footprints for a major animated film.

The Boxtrolls Through the Years

2005Alan Snow publishes Here Be Monsters! in the UK Here be monsters
2006US edition published under the same title Here be monsters
2014Laika's The Boxtrolls released theatrically The Boxtrolls
2014Mobile tie-in game The Boxtrolls: Egg Run released alongside the film
2014Second mobile tie-in The Boxtrolls: Slide the City released

The definitive version is the film

Alan Snow's novel is a genuine achievement, but its density and sprawling scope make it more of a world-building artifact than a story that pulls you urgently forward. The 2014 Laika film distills the essential warmth and weirdness into something emotionally coherent and visually stunning, with stop-motion craft that ranks among the studio's finest work. The class-anxiety subtext lands harder in motion than on the page, and Ben Kingsley's Snatcher is one of the studio's great villains. For most people, the film is where this story lives.

The Boxtrolls

The source novel is the underrated version

Here Be Monsters! sold reasonably well and earned praise from critics, but it has been largely overshadowed by the film it inspired and is rarely discussed on its own terms. Snow's drawings are extraordinary: closer in sensibility to the detailed world-building of Arthur Rackham or Edward Gorey than to modern children's book illustration. The villain's schemes are more elaborate, the underground world more richly populated, and the book rewards slow reading in a way animated features simply cannot. For readers who loved the film's aesthetic and want more of that Victorian grotesque atmosphere, the novel delivers it.

Here be monsters

Laika's output is the closest thing to a Boxtrolls extended universe

Because The Boxtrolls has no sequels and no spinoff series, the natural way to extend your time in that sensibility is through Laika's other films. The studio has a consistent voice: handcrafted darkness, genuinely strange villains, children navigating adult cruelty without having it softened for them. Coraline is the one to watch first if you haven't. Kubo and the Two Strings is arguably the studio's most technically accomplished work. ParaNorman is the most underrated. Each film stands alone, but together they form something like a body of work with a shared philosophy.