Travis Knight Reveals LAIKA’s Next Movies Will Be “Unlike Anything” It’s Done Before [Exclusive]
Wildwood is a major undertaking even by LAIKA‘s standards. Director Travis Knight confirmed that the movie features more puppets, practical sets, locations, and visual effects than any of the studio’s previous productions. Finishing something on that scale might be a good excuse to take a breather, but Knight and the rest of LAIKA Studios already have several other stories they want to tell.
During an interview with Collider’s Maggie Lovitt, Knight also discussed what those increasingly ambitious movies demand of him as a director. Each production gives him experience he can bring to the next, though that doesn’t mean approaching a new story gets any less intimidating. His upcoming projects will give him plenty of opportunities to put those lessons to work. Knight told Lovitt that LAIKA has several projects in development, with plans to explore genres the studio hasn’t tackled before. There will be a wait before audiences get to see those movies, of course, due to the nature of LAIKA’s animation. Asked what comes next after Wildwood, he said:
“We got a lot of wonderful projects that we’re developing with some great creative people. I’m very excited about the stories that we have yet to come. It does take us a while at LAIKA to make these movies. So there’s not one right around the corner. But we have stories that are unlike anything that we’ve ever done before that we’re developing. We have stories that take the medium of animation into places that it’s never gone before, stories that challenge us in different ways. And I’m excited that we’re playing around in some genres that we’ve never explored before.”
“We got a lot of wonderful projects that we’re developing with some great creative people. I’m very excited about the stories that we have yet to come. It does take us a while at LAIKA to make these movies. So there’s not one right around the corner. But we have stories that are unlike anything that we’ve ever done before that we’re developing. We have stories that take the medium of animation into places that it’s never gone before, stories that challenge us in different ways. And I’m excited that we’re playing around in some genres that we’ve never explored before.”
Knight didn’t name those unexplored genres, but he did temper expectations about how soon another movie might arrive. “Unfortunately, because these things in stop motion take time, you’re gonna have to wait a little longer than I’d hope,” he said. “But I think we’ve got a lot of wonderful stories yet to come.”
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
- This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends. - You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line. - The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight. - You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
- One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together. - You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea. - The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it. - You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
- Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept. - You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer. - The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people. - You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
- Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse. - You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for. - The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way. - Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
Travis Knight Shares Updates on ‘The Night Gardener’ and ‘Piranesi’
Two projects Knight could discuss were The Night Gardener and Piranesi, both of which LAIKA has previously announced. The former comes from Ozark co-creator Bill Dubuque, while the latter adapts Susanna Clarke‘s novel. When Lovitt asked about the projects he might direct next, Knight said:
“There are a couple of projects that I’m developing at LAIKA that we have actually announced. These are things I can talk about. One of them is The Night Gardener, which is a beautiful kind of neo-noir thriller, written by the great Bill Dubuque. It’s a story unlike anything we’ve ever seen in animation.”
</blockquote>“There are a couple of projects that I’m developing at LAIKA that we have actually announced. These are things I can talk about. One of them is The Night Gardener, which is a beautiful kind of neo-noir thriller, written by the great Bill Dubuque. It’s a story unlike anything we’ve ever seen in animation.”
Knight also singled out Clarke as one of his favorite authors when discussing Piranesi, and anyone familiar with the nature of the novel knows the adaptation presents a challenge. Fortunately, Knight sounded pleased to accept it. “One of the interesting things is it’s been called an unfilmable book,” he said, adding, “And I will take that challenge.”
Wildwood is now playing in theaters. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
Wildwood
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Peyton Elizabeth Lee
Prue McKeel (voice)
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Curtis Mehlberg (voice)
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Carey Mulligan
Alexandra (voice)
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Brenden (voice)
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