49 Fun Facts About Laika Studios

Laika's owner, Phil Knight, made his fortune as co-founder of which company?

Nike's Phil Knight invested in an animation house in 1998, his son Travis went to work there as an animator, and Knight later took control of it and renamed it Laika.

In which US state is the Laika studio based?

Oregon is home because Laika grew out of a local animation house; its films are shot in Hillsboro, where Coraline took a team three years to make.

What role did Travis Knight, the owner's son, take at Laika after Coraline's release?

President and CEO, yet he kept his hands on the puppets: Travis Knight stayed a lead animator on ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls while running the studio.

Laika is named after what?

The first dog to orbit Earth was a stray taken off the streets; she flew on Sputnik 2 in 1957 on a one-way trip, because no means of bringing her home had been built.

Which company was rebranded as Laika in 2005?

Will Vinton Studios made the singing California Raisins; founder Will Vinton, who trademarked the word Claymation, was pushed out after investor Phil Knight took control.

Who directed Coraline, Laika's first feature film?

Henry Selick had already directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film so tied to the producer who dreamed it up that its full title begins "Tim Burton's".

In Coraline, what do the Other Mother and Other Father have in place of eyes?

Buttons are the price of staying: the Other Mother will let Coraline live in her brighter world for good only if she lets a pair be sewn over her own eyes.

Which cancelled CGI project caused Laika's 2008 layoffs?

Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure was meant to be Laika's second film; shelving it in December 2008 cost 65 people their jobs, weeks before Coraline opened.

Why is the boy raised by the Boxtrolls called Eggs?

It is written on his box: Eggs wears the box like a bulky sweater and grows up convinced that he is a Boxtroll himself.

Which author wrote the novella behind Coraline, Laika's first feature?

Neil Gaiman began the story in 1990 for his five-year-old daughter Holly and took so long that he finished it, about a decade later, for her little sister Maddy.

Who voices Coraline Jones?

Dakota Fanning voices Coraline, and her younger sister Elle later followed her to Laika as Winnie, the mayor's daughter in The Boxtrolls.

Who voices the Other Mother, also called the Beldam, in Coraline?

Teri Hatcher, then starring in Desperate Housewives, also voices Coraline's distracted real mother, so the Other Mother's welcome arrives in a voice the girl already trusts.

Which band wrote and sang the Other Father's song in Coraline?

They Might Be Giants wrote more songs for the film, but this was the only one kept; band member John Linnell sings it in place of the Other Father's actor.

What did Coraline pioneer in stop-motion puppet making?

3D-printed replacement faces gave each puppet a library of swappable expressions; one film later, on ParaNorman, the studio was printing them in full colour.

In ParaNorman, who do the zombies that rise from their graves turn out to be?

The people who condemned the witch were a judge and six townsfolk, and she was Aggie, a girl of about Norman's age; the seven rise not to attack the town but to see her curse ended.

What unusual ability makes Norman an outcast in ParaNorman?

He can talk to the dead, among them his own grandmother, who keeps him company at home while almost nobody in town believes a word of it.

Who voices Norman in ParaNorman?

Kodi Smit-McPhee voices Norman, the bullied misfit who turns out to be the one person able to save the town that laughs at him.

Which Pitch Perfect star voices Norman's cheerleader sister Courtney in ParaNorman?

Anna Kendrick's Courtney starts out mortified by her little brother and ends up standing beside him against an angry mob.

Which novel is The Boxtrolls based on?

Here Be Monsters! runs to some 550 pages of assorted creatures; the film kept only the box-wearing trolls after a faithful first script proved fun but hollow.

In which fictional hilltop city is The Boxtrolls set?

Cheesebridge worships cheese: its aristocrats flaunt white hats and tasting parties, which is why the town's exterminator will do anything to earn a hat of his own.

Who voices the villainous exterminator Archibald Snatcher in The Boxtrolls?

Ben Kingsley's Snatcher hunts the harmless Boxtrolls for one reason: the town has promised him a white hat, and with it a seat among the elite.

Which Game of Thrones actor voices Eggs in The Boxtrolls?

Isaac Hempstead Wright played Bran Stark, and Laika went back to the same screen family for its next film: Art Parkinson, the show's Rickon, is the voice of Kubo.

Which British comedy duo both lend their voices to The Boxtrolls?

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are on opposite sides here: Frost is one of the exterminator's uneasy henchmen, while Pegg voices the hero's long-lost inventor father.

Which Beatles song, sung by Regina Spektor, closes Kubo and the Two Strings?

While My Guitar Gently Weeps is George Harrison's song; Regina Spektor recorded this version for a film whose hero works his magic by plucking strings.

Kubo and the Two Strings is set in which country?

Feudal Japan shaped every frame: the designers wanted the whole film to look and feel like a moving woodblock print in the old ukiyo-e style.

What instrument does Kubo play to bring origami to life?

Shamisen, not the magic armour he spends the film collecting, wins the final battle: Kubo defeats the Moon King by playing it.

Who voices Monkey in Kubo and the Two Strings?

Charlize Theron's Monkey starts the film as a small wooden charm that Kubo carries everywhere, then wakes as his sternly protective guardian.

Who voices Beetle in Kubo and the Two Strings?

Matthew McConaughey's Beetle, a forgetful half-man, half-insect warrior, is there to lighten a story that puts its young hero in mortal danger from the first scene.

Who voices the Moon King in Kubo and the Two Strings?

Ralph Fiennes voices the Moon King, who is no stranger to the hero: he is Kubo's own grandfather, hunting the boy with the help of Kubo's twin aunts.

Kubo was only the second animated film nominated for which Oscar?

Best Visual Effects had last seen an animated nominee in The Nightmare Before Christmas; Kubo's handmade puppets lost to the computer-generated animals of The Jungle Book.

Which Disney film beat Kubo and the Two Strings to the Oscar for Best Animated Feature?

Zootopia took the Oscar, but the British Academy went the other way: its Best Animated Film award went to Kubo, with the Disney hit among the beaten nominees.

In Kubo and the Two Strings, what did Kubo's grandfather take from him as a baby?

His left eye went to a grandfather who now wants the other one too, which is why Kubo's mother forbids him ever to stay out after dark.

Who wrote and directed Missing Link?

Chris Butler wrote, directed and designed the characters himself, trading the horror of his earlier ParaNorman for an old-fashioned globe-trotting adventure.

Who voices Sir Lionel Frost in Missing Link?

Hugh Jackman's Sir Lionel goes looking for the creature only because a letter urges him to, and the letter turns out to have been written by the creature itself.

In Missing Link, what name does Mr. Link choose for himself?

Susan replaces the name he was handed: 'Mr. Link' was Sir Lionel's idea, and the creature decides he would rather pick his own.

Who voices Mr. Link?

Zach Galifianakis voices Mr. Link, a lonely giant who sets off across the world to find cousins he has never met and a place where he belongs.

What distinction did Missing Link's $100 million budget give it on release in 2019?

Most expensive stop-motion film ever, and a costly one to release: it took in under $27 million worldwide, about a quarter of what it cost to make.

Missing Link was the first non-CGI film to win which award?

The Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature went to a film that had flopped in cinemas nine months earlier, ahead of Disney's Frozen II and Toy Story 4.

In Missing Link, what kind of creature is Mr. Link?

A Sasquatch from the forests of the Pacific Northwest, he has taught himself English well enough to write the letter that brings an explorer out to find him.

Laika's sixth film, Wildwood, is based on a novel by which Decemberists frontman?

Colin Meloy wrote Wildwood with his wife, the illustrator Carson Ellis; Laika optioned it in 2011, then needed fifteen years to put it on screen.

Wildwood's hidden forest lies near which city?

Portland's real Forest Park, more than 5,000 wooded acres inside the city limits, is the model: in the story locals call it the Impassable Wilderness and stay out.

In Wildwood, which animals serve as soldiers in the Dowager Governess's army?

Coyotes in uniform follow Alexandra, who once ruled part of the forest: after her son died she turned to dark magic, was exiled for it, and now plots her revenge.

In Wildwood, which birds carry off Prue's baby brother at the start of the story?

Crows swoop down on a park and carry the boy into a forest that local people never enter, so Prue has to go in after him.

Which Susanna Clarke novel did Laika acquire in 2024 for Travis Knight to direct?

Piranesi was Clarke's first novel in sixteen years, written through the long illness that kept her largely housebound; its narrator lives in an endless house of statues and tides.

In Coraline, which animal slips between the two worlds and can talk in the Other World?

A black cat with no name of his own acts as Coraline's guide, warning her about the Other World long before she is ready to listen.

In Missing Link, which legendary land do the Yetis call home?

Shangri-La can be found only with a hand-drawn map kept by Sir Lionel's old flame Adelina, who refuses to hand it over unless she comes along.

Under what name did Travis Knight briefly record as a rapper?

Chilly Tee made one album, 1993's Get Off Mine, produced by Public Enemy's Bomb Squad; nobody bought it, he said, and he gave up rap for animation.

Which Transformers film was Travis Knight's live-action directing debut?

Bumblebee came naturally to an animator: Knight, a fan of the original 1980s Transformers, said he treated every robot scene as if he were animating it.

On Coraline, Althea Crome was hired for which tiny, painstaking job?

Knitting the puppets' sweaters was her sole job on the film, done by hand with needles as thin as human hairs.