RE-release cinema isn’t quite what it was. With the whole history of cinema now just a click away on the streaming buffet, the thrilling urgency of the opportunity to see old favourites back on the big screen is no longer so pressingly felt.

Where, once upon a time, returning their animated canon to cinemas was a lucrative industry for Disney, for instance, so paltry were the recent re-release takings of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin that a planned reissue for The Little Mermaid was canned. It’s a far cry from the days when films like Pinocchio could recoup an underwhelming first release with further takings years down the line.

And yet, very occasionally, a re-release can still break through. Take James Cameron’s Avatar. Having been bested by Avengers: Endgame in 2019, the blue blockbusting behemoth reclaimed its top spot as the highest grossing film of all time following a hugely successful 2021 re-release.

As part of their 100th anniversary celebrations, Columbia are currently mid-cycle in a re-release cycle for their nine-film strong Spider-Man collection. Those late to the game have missed Sam Raimi’s Tobey Maguire fronted trilogy but Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland’s iterations will continue to release weekly through to October. Safe to say, they’re doing well.

Outperforming all three webslingers, however, and in cinemas this week is a young girl from Oregon with a black bob and yellow mac.

From director Henry Selick, Coraline made her cinematic debut back in 2009. At the time, the pitch black ‘family’ comedy was considered a high risk offering for stop motion studio Laika, albeit less for its horror leanings than the foregrounding of a female lead. As conventional wisdom then had it, girls only made money at the box office when tiaras and animal sidekicks were involved.

Coraline proved them all wrong. The film was witty, gently frightening and gorgeously animated - adjectives equally applicable to the heroine herself.

The story tells of secret doors and sinister secrets, of talking cats and demonic lookalikes with button eyes and elongated limbs. When Coraline discovers an idealised alternative to her dreary life, all is not as it seems.

Fifteen years on, Coraline’s re-release has exploded box office expectations, taking a quick $50m in its first ten days alone. It would seem that, even now, Coraline just can’t help proving common wisdom wrong.