Travis Knight Directing LAIKA’s Next Movie, ‘Wildwood’

LAIKA

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Portland studio LAIKA announced that its next stop-motion and CG hybrid animated feature film release will be Wildwood, based on the bestselling novel written by Colin Meloy, which the company optioned in 2011.

Travis Knight, the Academy Award-nominated director of Kubo and the Two Strings and LAIKA’s president/CEO, is helming the movie, which is currently in production.

Six-time Oscar nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (Fly Away Home, The Patriot) is serving as director of photography.

Based on the book written by Meloy, the lead singer and songwriter for The Decemberists, and illustrated by Carson Ellis, Wildwood is a Portland-set story that follows Prue McKeel, who enters an enchanted wonderland when her baby brother Mac is taken by a murder of crows into the forest’s depths. LAIKA’s Oscar-nominated Chris Butler (ParaNorman) wrote the screenplay and Arianne Sutner is producing.

Knight, whose directing credits also include the live-action Transformers spinoff Bumblebee and upcoming The Six Billion Dollar Man, said in a released statement: “With Wildwood, I have the opportunity to tell a madly ambitious story of magic, wonder, and danger set in the place I grew up. My very own Portland will join that pantheon of unforgettable fantasy realms, with a stirring epic that will kindle imaginations, lift spirits, and break hearts.”

LAIKA’s five animated features — Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings  and Missing Link — have all been nominated for the Academy Award for outstanding animated feature.