When I spoke to Laika President and CEO Travis Knight a couple months back, he told me that his studio is actively working on expanding and by 2015 hoped to be able to start producing one film a year. It sounds like an incredible and ambitious idea given how painstaking the stop-motion animation process is, but guess what? They already have another movie planned for 2014.
Box Office Mojo has gotten word that Laika has put one of their untitled projects officially on the map, establishing a release date on September 26, 2014. The movie will be the first time the studio has ventured into the fall months, as Coraline came out in February and ParaNorman made its way to theaters this past August. Just like the two previous films, the movie will be distributed by Focus Features. It is currently the only film to have a release date in 2014, and it stands almost exactly in the middle between Marvel Studio's Guardians of the Galaxy and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,.
Now, of course, the big question is about what the movie is. Once again referring to my interview with the company's founder, he told me that Laika has about 10 projects currently in various forms of development. He also told me that the films are a mix of original scripts and adapted material. Given that the project announced today is simply called Untitled Laika Project, it's reasonable for someone to think that it may definitely be an original project (if it were an adaptation it would have a title), but it's also possible that the date is just a goal and they are deciding which is best suited to go into full production. It will be an interesting development to watch and you can be sure that we'll be following it closely here on Cinema Blend.
