Victorian etchings, textile designs influenced costumes Missing Link used about 130,000 sq ft of stage space at Laika, which accommodates around 260,000 sq ft of stage space in total, and occupied about 50,000 sq ft more than Kubo. There were approximately 90 sets ranging from a large forest clearing to miniature interiors of a gentlemen’s club and Frost’s residence in London, to scenes straight out of the Wild West, an ocean liner, and a staggering yeti temple inspired by Himalayan architecture and Jainism that took four months to build.Īt the peak of production there were roughly 450 people on the sets. There are more facial expressions, more locations, better technology, bigger sets and more of them than anything in the first four films.
Speak to the heads of department (HOD) at Laika and they will tell you Missing Link is the most ambitious of all Laika films so far.
“We want to leave audience members with a sense of boundless optimism.” Yet this one, insists Sutner, who shared an animation Oscar nomination with Knight in 2017 for Kubo And The Two Strings, has an upbeat message. Laika films are known for not pulling their emotional punches, for not being afraid of straying toward the dark side of the human experience. Along the way they are aided and abetted by a vibrant cast of characters, among them Sir Lionel’s feisty old flame, Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana).Īdelina Fortnight (voiced by Zoe Saldana) in ‘Missing Link’ “It’s a little bit Indiana Jones, a little big Sherlock Holmes, a little bit Ray Harryhausen.” Scope is the name of the game on Missing Link, in which an eight-foot tall shaggy beast known as Link (voiced by Zach Galifianakis) stumbles out of the Pacific NorthWest and enlists the support of adventurer Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) to travel to Shangri-La and find his yeti ancestors. “I thought it could be cool to make an Indiana Jones in stop motion,” he says. “It’s definitely our most ambitious to date and biggest in scope,” says Butler as he cues up 25 minutes of footage from the film, essentially a Victorian Era globe-trotting action-adventure that the British head of story at Laika (who directed Laika’s 2012 release ParaNorman and shared an animation Oscar nod the following year) first thought up 15 years ago. President and CEO Knight was barely around during production as he was occupied with directing duties on Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, and for the first time it will not be Focus Features but United Artists Releasing that distributes the film in the US, yet an atmosphere of contentment and quiet industry pervades.
The wizards at Travis Knight’s captivating studio in Portland, Oregon, recently took a couple of days to show press around the place. Two years of production in the bag and several months of post nearing an end, Missing Link writer-director Chris Butler, producer Arianne Sutner and the heads of department at Laika Studios are applying the finishing touches to the animation studio’s fifth film ahead of the US launch on April 12 through United Artists Releasing. Sir Lionel (voiced by Hugh Jackman) and Link (voiced by Zach Galifianakis) in ‘Missing Link’ Source: Courtesy of Laika Studios / Annapurna Pictures
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