The team behind the award-winning stop-motion film Kubo and the Two Strings is moving from Japan to Shangri-La. Laika has announced its next film is Missing Link, a tale about finding living proof of humankind’s primitive ancestry. It’s apparently the studio’s most ambitious film to date.
Mr Link (Zach Galifianakis) doesn’t want you to spoil his hiding spot. Image: Laika
“It’s the most striking thing we’ve ever done,” Laika president and CEO Travis Knight said in a press release.
Missing Link will star Zach Galifianakis as Mr Link, a creature first discovered by researcher Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) in the Pacific Northwest – which, in real life, is believed to be the home of one or more Bigfoots, a famous so-called “missing link”. Along with adventurer Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), Link and Frost will venture around the globe in search of Shangri-La, believed to be the secret home of Link’s long-lost family.
Laika is known for taking a lot of risks with its stop-motion animated films, and Missing Link looks to be raising the stakes even higher. According to producer Arianne Sutner, in order to achieve the scale needed to make Missing Link, Laika created “110 sets with 65 locations”. And that looks to be only the beginning of what’s in store with this film.
Given how Laika – which also made Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls – has only continued to grow and improve with each of its movies, I’m excited to see what’s in store this time. Missing Link is set to come out in autumn 2019.