Oregon Public Broadcasting

Two months after its debut, the film Coraline is now showing overseas -- and generating a buzz for the Laika studio and the Beaver State.

Here’s how studio president Travis Knight puts it.

Travis Knight: “I think the success of Coraline highlights that us hillbilly rubes up here in Oregon might actually know a thing or two about what we’re doing.” 

The film has earned about $83 million so far and cost $70 million to make.

While that doesn’t mean it’s in the black– because distributors and others take a hefty cut – it does qualify Coraline as a success in Hollywood terms.

So the question for Kristian Foden-Vencil was: What’s next and what will it mean for local jobs?

Coraline is the début production of Laika -- the stop-animation studio run by Nike founder, Phil Knight, and his son Travis.  It’s about the 3D adventures of an 11-year-old girl who finds an alternative universe.

Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) travels through a portal between worlds in Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated 3-D adventure.

Movie: “Coraline Jones always dreamed of finding a better world.  A world more exciting than this. But never did she imagine that she’d discover it in her own home.”

For Oregonians, having a studio like Laika in their "own home" means the prospect of future home-grown  jobs.

The use of a female protagonist -- instead of a fuzzy woodland creature; shooting in 3D; and using an antiquated stop-motion system; all make Coraline an anomaly in movie terms.

But, says Shawn Levy, the movie critic for The Oregonian, it’s done well.

Shawn Levy: “And it has yet to open in Europe. Some of the hugest markets in the world are Russian, the UK, France, I expect it’ll do very well there. So we’re looking at a profit making film that has critical lauds. So that’s pretty darn good.”

But since success breeds success, Laika doesn’t want to leave too much time between its first film and its second. So, it’s set a deadline. It wants to pare-down the half dozen ideas it’s currently playing with by the end of this summer.

So when might shooting start?

Claire Jennings is the president of entertainment at Laika

Claire Jennings: “We would probably be looking at towards next summer, 2010. And how many people. The usual size of a crew is 150 or 200.”

And each of those animators will be making a family wage.

And who can they thank?

Director/Writer Henry Selick (left) and lead animator Travis Knight (right) at work on Coraline.

Movie: “I’m Coraline Jones. And I am the amazing Bobinski But you. Call me Mr. B. Because amazing, I already know that I am.  You see Caroline, my new songs go umpah umpah. But the jumping mice only play toodle toot. Like that. It’s nice, but not so much amazing.”

Pinning down exactly what Coraline was all about is difficult, given the jumping mice, talking cats and button eyes. But now at least, Hollywood types have a film on which to judge Laika.

So what ideas will feature in the next film?

Travis Knight: “Those I can’t really talk about before we announce them. But we have everything from really broad comedies to tales of unspeakable horror. It’s an incredible range of projects and the artists behind them are all very unique and distinctive in their own way.”

In other words. We’re going to have to wait and see.

Laikas’ Claire Jennings says the quality of the film was the main reasons for its success.

But she also gives local ad agency, Weiden + Kennedy, a nod.  It took the film apart from a marketing perspective and then sold each part to a target audience. For example she explains, it sent sneak previews to fans of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ to influential movie bloggers and to devotees of Coraline’s author Neil Gaiman.

Claire Jennings: “And they gave them codes that allowed them to unlock these sneak previews, so nobody else could see it. And then these guys and women were talking about it on the internet to all the people who clicked into their sites. I thought it was genius personally. And then also in Coraline we have like little sweaters, you know she wears clothes, and there is a lady who knits these little sweaters with tiny needles. And we did documentaries of those and sent them to internet knitting clubs and they talked to their people about them. And then the same with carpentry, we have some amazing carpenters on Coraline.”

It worked. The opening weekend box office take was almost double the $9 million prediction. Meaning Weiden + Kennedy could get a few calls from Tinsel Town.

After all, people who Laika had to work hard to find last year, are now calling them.

That, says movie critic Shawn Levy, is the Hollywood way.

Shawn Levy: “People of wary of being the first to do something. But everyone wants to be the second. So whereas Laika and Phil Knight might have had doubters going into the first, now they have suitors.”

A couple more issues that bode well for Oregon’s budding film industry.

First animation movies like Coraline tend to have a longer shelf life. Think of a family of five, which has to spend 70 bucks going to the movies. But the DVD only costs $20 and it’ll get parents as many viewings as their kids can sit through.

Then second: movie audiences are rising as the economy falls. Go figure.