It's been 16 years since the founding of LAIKA Studios. Feeling like it's time to do something special, earlier this week, the studio partnered up with Fathom Events, Shout! Factory, and Park Circus to bring its first-ever stop-motion feature film back to theaters -- Coraline. The studio poured about four years into production of their first feature film and has since been a staple of their skills.
While the studio has put out films since the 2009 feature, it's Coraline that many associate to LAIKA's success. The film, which is based off of Neil Gaiman's novella of the same name, grossed $410,000 in the US box office during its single day return. This flick marked the most successful event since the pandemic started rocking the industry in early 2020.
It also held the second highest per-screen average of any film, only being played on just 675 screens. On top of the film, fans also got to see the behind the scenes side of the stop-motion animation. After all, it's not easy to do such animation, it's very tedious and -- above all -- time-consuming, hence its four-year development time.
Here's the official synopsis of Coraline.
"Wandering her rambling old house in her boring new town, Coraline (Dakota Fanning) discovers a hidden door to a fantasy version of her life. In order to stay in the fantasy, she must make a frighteningly real sacrifice."
This isn't going to be the last time we're going to hear of the team working with Fathrom, Shout!, and Park Cirus, though, as they're already underway to host a screening of their second stop-motion feature film, ParaNorman.