The anti-Skydance: How a Nike billionaire’s backing lets Laika spend a reported $100 million on ‘Wildwood’
Source: Fortune ·
The studio behind ‘Coraline’ is run by the Nike co-founder’s son, and its films rarely make money at the box office.
From the source
Laika, the Oregon studio behind Coraline and ParaNorman, has something close to a hit on its hands, at least by its own standards. Wildwood, the company’s sixth feature and, like all of its films, made entirely in stop-motion animation, opened in third place on Oct. 23 with roughly $12.3 million at the domestic box office. Directed by Laika president and CEO Travis Knight, the film held up over Halloween weekend, slipping just 39% to an estimated $7.5 million and lifting its domestic total to $25.9 million, according to the Associated Press. It again finished third, behind A24’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything and DC Studios’ Clayface. In an animated landscape dominated by billion-dollar sequels like Toy Story 5 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, those are modest numbers. For Laika, they’re a meaningful rebound. Its previous film, 2019’s Missing Link, opened to just $5.9 million and finished with $16.6 million domestically. Wildwood has already passed that film’s…