Laika, LLC

Laika is an American independent stop-motion animation studio based in Hillsboro, Oregon, in the Portland metropolitan area. It makes feature films, commercial content, music videos and short films, and is best known for its stop-motion features Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link, with Wildwood announced as an upcoming film. The studio took its present name in July 2005, when Will Vinton Studios was rebranded as Laika, a name taken from the dog sent into space by the Soviet Union in 1957. It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and his son Travis Knight, who worked at the studio as an animator before leading it, serves as president and chief executive. Laika once had two divisions, one for feature films and one for commercial work; the commercial arm was spun off in July 2014 as HouseSpecial so that the studio could concentrate on feature films. It also has a Los Angeles-based subsidiary called Laika Live Action.