Disney has admitted it will be forced to write off more than $50m after cancelling a film project – believed to be Coraline director Henry Selick's latest stop-motion venture – earlier this year.

It was revealed in August that the untitled project from the highly respected film-maker, which had 150 San Francisco based animators working on it, had been cancelled. Despite having been shooting since the previous summer, industry blog Deadline reported that the film "just wasn't coming together in a manner that pleased the studio". Little information has been forthcoming as to the exact nature of Selick's film, but a job posting on creativeheads.net last year listed the Selick project under the title Shade Maker and described Selick's mandate to "make great, scary films for young 'uns".

Selick, who also directed critically acclaimed animation features such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, rejoined Disney in 2010 (where he also worked as a young apprentice animator post-college) in what was described at the time as a long-term contract to produce stop-motion animation films. It was previously reported that he would be permitted to approach other studios with the cancelled film.

The suggestion that Disney torpedoed a project from a highly respected animator with a strong track record at huge expense hints at an unprecedented jitteriness at the company. Earlier this year, the company was forced to admit that it might lose $200m due to the disappointing performance of science-fiction epic John Carter, which many in the industry blamed on poor marketing. Nevertheless, the studio is hardly faring badly on the whole in 2012 thanks to the enormous box office success of comic-book movie The Avengers. Joss Whedon's superhero ensemble has taken more than $1.5bn, making it Disney's highest grossing film of all time and the third highest overall.

The studio has also seen animated film Brave, produced by its wholly owned division Pixar, perform well at the box office this year. The boisterous Scottish-set fairytale fantasy has taken $488m worldwide.

The $50m write-down was announced by Disney chief financial officer Jay Rasulo at a communications and entertainment conference in Los Angeles yesterday. Rasulo did not name the project in question but said it would cost the company two cents in per-share earnings. Selick's film had been expected to hit cinemas in October 2013.

The veteran animator was reported earlier this year to be in line to direct an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book at Disney, though it is not known if that project is still in the works. Gaiman also wrote the 2002 novella upon which Selick's Coraline was based.