It’s been six years since the release of “Missing Link,” the sixth stop-motion animated film from the Portland-based animation house Laika. If you don’t remember it, that’s because the $100 million film was a financial bomb, bringing in only $26.5 million globally. Prior Laika films were all budgeted in the $60 million range and were almost all consistent performers at the box office with around $100 million globally, but reports at the time estimated “Missing Link” could have lost over $100 million after expenses.
The onset of COVID-19 in early 2020 didn’t help Laika bounce back. The pandemic severely hampered the company’s ability to work by hand in their tactile animation facility in the Oregon woodlands, such that production on the company’s next ambitious stop-motion epic, “Wildwood,” did not formally begin until September 2021. The company’s founder, Travis Knight, in the meantime has been occupied with the upcoming live-action “Masters of the Universe” tentpole film for Amazon MGM.
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But Laika hasn’t been sitting idly in the six years that have passed. After the failure of “Missing Link,” the studio has taken its time to, just as they do with each of their films, rebuild piece by piece. They’re now aiming to let a new audience know who they are, all over again.
“It hasn’t been a quiet phase for us,” David Burke, Laika’s CMO, told IndieWire. “It’s really been more a quiet build. It’s not us being dormant. We’ve been using that time to reflect on who Laika is and what the audience needs from us now, and also recognizing that the industry is shifting. We’re not just adapting. We’re reasserting what makes Laika singular.”
“Wildwood” is as good of a re-introduction as any. The fantasy film is based on the first in a trilogy of YA novels by Colin Meloy, better known as the lead singer and songwriter for the Portland-based indie rock band The Decemberists. But the project is also right at home for Laika, as it’s set in a secret forest just outside of Laika’s home in Portland and follows a girl whose baby brother is taken into the forest, only to discover an exotic world of talking animals and bandits. It sounds like she might’ve stumbled on Laika’s studio facility.
“Wildwood” was the headliner as part of Laika’s Annecy presentation, in which the company teased its upcoming projects — both animated and in its new live-action division — it has in the works. It also reminded the audience that a six-year layover didn’t mean audiences forgot about them completely.
Last year, Laika in partnership with Fathom Events re-released Henry Selick’s 3-D darling “Coraline,” raking in $56 million at the box office and making it one of the most successful re-releases ever. The company will hope lightning strikes twice and plans to re-release “ParaNorman” remastered and in 3-D on October 25 in the US, and it will also be accompanied with a new short film, “ParaNorman: The Thrifting.”
That short is a good example of how Laika is going beyond its roots, having outsourced some of the animation work to a French company called Passion Pictures, while keeping the creative in-house. But in addition to outsourcing, Laika has used the time to ramp up infrastructure internally and now has a beefy development slate. Considering Laika has in its first 20 years since being founded in 2005 only made six films to date, the studio appears to be setting themselves up to make a lot more movies in its next 20.
That means live-action productions like Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck taking on a Taylor Jenkins Reid novel or Jon Spaiths making his directorial debut on a sci-fi thriller. And it also means — crucially — the ability for Laika to produce multiple movies at once, with both the fantasy adaptation “Piranesi” and the neo-noir folktale “The Night Gardner” both in active development. The Annecy presentation also teased new projects in the works from the animator duo known as Headless (Victor Maldonado & Alfredo Torres), Chris Butler, Sam Fell, and The Copeland Brothers.
“We’ve always been about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in stop-motion animation, and now we’re taking that mindset and applying it to filmmaking in general,” Burke said. “I think what the world will see is that when ‘Wildwood’ is released and there’s more visibility around our broader creative strategy, there’s going to be a greater understanding around the expressions of that.”
But the lengthy layover has meant Laika has to get more aggressive in positioning “Wildwood” to audiences, even before the company has secured a distributor to release it (Burke said the company is in active discussions with several potential distributors for the film). Theatrical would seem to be the priority since four of six of their films were released via Focus Features, while “Missing Link” was one of the last wide releases from Annapurna Pictures and United Artists Releasing.
Laika has re-evaluated its event strategy and consumer product strategy in the recent years. It’s been working on brand affinity, deeper audience connections, and simple awareness for Laika’s films with younger audiences.
The “Hidden Worlds” exhibit at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture back in 2023 was one cog in that flywheel (it will move to the Academy Museum in December 2026 through September 2027), with Laika trotting out real puppets and sets for display. Other targeted TikTok marketing featuring making-of reels for films like “Coraline” and “The Boxtrolls” has been another. Burke says the success of the “Coraline” re-release is the product of several years of effort in terms of generating awareness and not an overnight surprise. And the door is open for re-releases of its other titles too.
“We couldn’t just kind of rely on traditional marketing strategies to lead the release of ‘Wildwood,” Burke said. “We had to be a little bit more intentional, a little bit more strategic and really take responsibility for growing the audience in house and put in place a number of strategic initiatives.”
Still, these movies need to make financial sense in a way that “Missing Link” didn’t. Burke said the goal in this period has been to develop better workflows, adjust their process, bring in tech solutions, and become more efficient, all without sacrificing quality. He insists they’re doing that even as Knight juggles numerous projects at once.
It’s not just Laika that is navigating a tricky spot in animation. There’s as much demand for kids and family films as ever, but just ask Pixar about the challenges of launching an original property in theaters these days. Even Netflix, which has seen huge numbers licensing Illumination movies, hasn’t seen the same results with its original animation forays.
So whether “Wildwood” and future Laika films make more sense for a streamer or in theaters, Laika is relying on “Wildwood” being the face of an exciting next chapter on the company’s journey.
“What we’re aiming to do is really eventize ‘Wildwood’ as a destination film for not just Laika fans, not just animation fans, but audiences in general, and we feel we have something that is truly unique, that is of the culture,” Burke said. “There’s something that’s really resonating right now that feels right for Laika, and I would say that there’s every confidence for us to deliver on an event animation film with ‘Wildwood.’ ‘Coraline’ underlines that we can mobilize our fans and animation fans, but we can also mobilize new audiences.”
