Latest in Chris Butler

The President and CEO of LAIKA, the Oregon stop-motion studio which this month claimed its sixth Oscar nomination, Travis Knight was excited by the prospect of taking the company in new directions with its latest film, Missing Link. Directed by Chris Butler (ParaNorman), the epic adventure film centers on Sir Lionel…

UPDATED with video from speech: The biggest shock of the 77th Golden Globes came in the Best Animated Feature Film category when Laika’s Missing Link abruptly upgraded its industry stature from “box-office disappointment” to “underdog awards winner” by besting a field of blockbuster rivals with better pedigrees…

Since its inception 14 years ago, LAIKA has become perhaps the greatest innovator in the medium of stop-motion. Led by President and CEO Travis Knight, the team at the Oregon-based animation studio has worked tirelessly to push creative boundaries with each of its five films, taking on one of its biggest challenges to…

With his second stop-motion feature, Missing Link, writer/director Chris Butler took on a story with colorful characters, massive environments and a variety of complex action sequences, striving to bring a live-action quality to an animated world, which would be put together through a painstaking physical process, one…

After making ParaNorman—the "zombie movie for kids," which served as his first feature—writer/director Chris Butler wanted to go in an entirely different direction, artistically. "The next thing I wanted to try was a big, bold, colorful adventure movie—stepping out of the shadows, if you like," Butler said at The…

LAIKA will be pulling out all the stops this Sunday at The Landmark in Los Angeles with a day-long retrospective of the studio’s animated body of work. Admission is free for the event, which includes screenings of all five LAIKA feature films to date: Missing Link (2019), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), The Boxtrolls…

UPDATE: With Universal moving its family feature The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle off of April 12 to MLK weekend 2020, Annapurna is moving its Laika toon Missing Link up by a week to that date. Pic will be up against such wide releases as Aviron’s Hero Fiennes Tiffin-Selma Blair sci-fi pic After and the Fox drama Breakthr…

Penelope Ann Miller, coming off a stint on ABC’s Mistresses, has been cast in the network’s drama pilot American Crime. Written and exec produced by John Ridley, fresh off winning an Oscar for 12 Years A Slave, it centers on the racially charged murder of a war veteran and the subsequent trial, which are examined…

Just in time for Halloween, here’s a teaser for the stop-motion animated ParaNorman, from LAIKA and Focus Features, the partners that made and released the deliciously dark Coraline. Directed by Sam Fell (Flushed Away, The Tale of Despereaux) and Chris Butler (who also wrote the screenplay), it’s about a boy who…

Taylor Kinney, best known for his role as werewolf Mason Lockwood on Vampire Diaries, has become the first actor cast in Michael Patrick King’s drama pilot for NBC A Mann’s World. In the vein of Shampoo, the project centers on a straight Beverly Hills hairdresser in his 50s who is struggling to stay young and relevant…

EXCLUSIVE: True Blood has tapped Hawthorne actress Christina Moore to join the season 4 cast as a recurring. Moore — whose credits also include MADtv, That ’70s Show, and 90210 — will play Suzanne McKittrick, a WASPy Texas housewife who possesses certain special abilities. Moore will shoot her True Blood arc while on…