LAIKA Teaming Up With Spider-Verse's Phil Lord and Chris Miller for First Live-Action Movie
Lord & Miller will produce LAIKA's foray into live-action, with Brian Duffield tapped to direct.
LAIKA, the film studio behind Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings, is about to make a plunge into the world of live-action storytelling. Travis Knight's studio is known for making stop-motion animation, but it has now joined forces with Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller to make its first live-action feature film. On Tuesday, LAIKA announced that it had acquired the rights to Crumble, and original script written by No One Will Save You and Spontaneous filmmaker Brian Duffield.
Lord and Miller will be producing Crumble alongside Aditya Sood through their Lord Miller company, with Lucy Kitada and Nikki Baida serving as executive producers. In addition to his writing duties, Duffield will direct Crumble and serve as one of the producers.
According to LAIKA's press release about Crumble, the new movie is about a married couple who "go on a world-traversing adventure in the hop of finding a cure to an ancient curse." No further details about the film were given.
Duffield has become a very in-demand filmmaker over the last couple of years, especially after the release of 2023's No One Will Save You, which received heaps of praise from both critics and fans. He has also been tapped to co-write, direct, and produce 20th Century's highly anticipated adaptation of Whalefall, based on the 2023 novel from frequent Guillermo del Toro collaborator Daniel Kraus.
"We're so excited to partner with Brian and the entire team at Lord Miller on this special film," said LAIKA Live Action Film & Series President Matt Levin. "Brian has such a singular voice and Crumble perfectly embodies the bold, emotional, and inventive storytelling that we champion at LAIKA. Lord Miller is in a class of its own and we could not ask for a better creative team to bring this story to life."
"I'll never forget seeing Coraline on opening night at the AMC Burbank 16 and wondering who these wonderful new geniuses were," Duffield said. "I can't wait to make a movie with them and hopefully live up to their banner, and I couldn't be more excited to get to go on a new adventure with my friends at Lord Miller."
"We're so excited to keep collaborating with our friend Brian Duffield who has written a script that is endlessly imaginative, funny and romantic," Lord and Miller added in a joint statement. "We have long been fans of LAIKA and Travis Knight's groundbreaking work in animation and could not be more excited to join forces with them in live action."
