The anti-Skydance: How a Nike billionaire’s backing lets Laika spend a reported $100 million on ‘Wildwood’ | Fortune

Laika's stop-motion animated feature "Wildwood," directed by studio CEO Travis Knight and reportedly budgeted at about $100 million, opened in third place on Oct. 23 with roughly $12.3 million domestically and held well over Halloween weekend, slipping just 39% to an estimated $7.5 million for a domestic total of $25.9 million and nearly $36 million worldwide. The performance marks a rebound for the Oregon studio, whose previous film, 2019's "Missing Link," opened to just $5.9 million and finished at $16.6 million domestically, though "Wildwood" remains far from profitability under the industry rule of thumb that films need roughly 2.5 times their production budget to break even. Laika's domestic grosses have declined with nearly every release since "Coraline" earned $75 million in 2009, with "ParaNorman" ($56 million), "The Boxtrolls" ($50.8 million), and "Kubo and the Two Strings" ($48 million) trailing before "Missing Link" bottomed out. The studio's financial staying power rests on Nike co-founder Phil Knight, Travis Knight's father, who took a stake in Laika's predecessor Will Vinton Studios in 1998 and became majority owner in 2002; Laika is privately held and does not report its finances. The film trails A24's Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" and DC Studios' "Clayface" at the box office, and faces a challenging landscape against billion-dollar animated sequels like "Toy Story 5" and "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie." Watch for international rollout performance and whether "Wildwood" can sustain its hold to close the gap toward its reported budget.