Laika's Wildwood Rebounds, but Phil Knight Still Pays
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Wildwood is outperforming Laika's last film, yet it carries a reported budget of about $100 million. The stop-motion studio stays afloat on money from the family of Nike co-founder Phil Knight.
A $100 million bet
Laika has not disclosed what Wildwood cost. Reports put it at about $100 million. Illumination spent $85 million on Minions & Monsters and DreamWorks $80 million on Forgotten Island.
The studio's history makes the arithmetic harder. Coraline took in $75 million domestically in 2009. ParaNorman earned $56 million, The Boxtrolls $50.8 million and Kubo and the Two Strings $48 million, before Missing Link fell to $16.6 million.
Cinemas take roughly half of ticket money, and the stated budget leaves out marketing costs. A common industry yardstick puts break-even in theaters at about 2.5 times the production budget, and possibly only Coraline has reached it. Laika is private and publishes no financial results.
Who pays for the puppets
Phil Knight took a stake in Will Vinton Studios, Laika's predecessor, in 1998. He became majority owner in 2002, and the company was renamed Laika in 2005. In 2014 the studio spun off its commercial division to focus on features.
His son Travis Knight is the studio's president and CEO, directed Wildwood and has sat on Nike's board since 2015. Forbes' real-time estimate puts the Knight family's wealth at roughly $26 billion. It lets Laika gamble creatively and commercially, as with Wildwood's PG-13 rating, a first for the studio. Two other animated films this year made trims to get PG ratings.
Fathom Entertainment, a smaller company best known for event cinema and rereleases, handles Wildwood in U.S. theaters. Its run of Coraline's 2024 anniversary release was Fathom's highest-grossing in the U.S.
The box office in context
Wildwood is the sixth feature from the Oregon studio behind Coraline and ParaNorman, and every one of them is stop-motion. It opened third on Oct. 23 with roughly $12.3 million domestically. Over Halloween weekend it slipped just 39% to an estimated $7.5 million and was third again.
The Associated Press puts its domestic total at $25.9 million. Missing Link, the 2019 release, opened to $5.9 million.
Worldwide, Wildwood's nearly $36 million already tops everything Missing Link earned around the globe.
A live-action division and new projects
In 2023 the studio brought in Matt Levin, formerly of Netflix, to lead a new live-action division. It is developing its first series, an adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's novel Exit Party, with Emma Stone and Dave McCary's Fruit Tree.
The animation slate includes Piranesi, which Travis Knight is set to direct, and The Night Gardener.
All five of Laika's earlier features earned Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature.
Our View
Wildwood's numbers look good mainly next to Missing Link. Against a $100 million budget they leave the studio dependent on its owner: if the Knight family's priorities change, nothing in the reported figures would replace that funding. The live-action division and the first series are the clearest tests of whether Laika can earn money outside expensive stop-motion bets.
Source: Fortune