Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Laika Lays Off 65; Cancels Film

I'm only posting this as earlier today I said that Laika was perhaps the best positioned of what Fast Company referred to as the "Baby Pixars." An article at OregonLive.com states that the studio has laid off 65 people and canceled Jack and Ben's Animated Adventure, a cgi film that was slated to be Laika's second feature after Coraline. Other pictures are in pre-production and the company will announce its plans in the new year.
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7 comments:

  1. David December 17, 2008 10:58 PM

    Oh, gosh ... not good.

    :-(

    I have friends who moved up there to work on it .

    That's disheartening.

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  2. Mark MayersonDecember 18, 2008 6:59 AM

    I have friends there, too, David.

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  3. AnonymousDecember 18, 2008 12:47 PM

    is there a studio making a cgi feature in every state or something?

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  4. AnonymousDecember 19, 2008 9:38 AM

    Comment 1) My opinion, Ziggy, is that there probably aren't THAT many screwball corporate executives in Hollywood that actually want to set up an animation studio (not enough for all 50 states, anyway).

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  5. AnonymousDecember 19, 2008 9:39 AM

    Comment 2) Merry Christmas to all.

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  6. Chris PalmerDecember 23, 2008 3:02 AM

    Really sad news.

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  7. Ward JenkinsDecember 23, 2008 3:02 AM

    Like mentioned on the Brew, it should be noted that the 65 (probably 10 more after the Holiday break) were from the Jack & Ben CG feature. Although very upsetting, I think it's a matter of the studio trimming some fat on a project that had been languishing in pre-production for years. It was going nowhere. Barry comes in and makes some drastic changes, but apparently it wasn't enough for the studio to keep this project going. They probably did the right thing, although with some sacrifices.

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