EXCLUSIVE: Laika has drafted Dave Kajganich, the hot screenwriter currently working on projects with Oscar-winning directors Barry Jenkins, Ridley Scott and Edward Berger, to pen its stop-motion adaptation of Piranesi, the internationally bestselling fantasy novel by Susanna Clarke.
Laika announced the project in June 2024. The studio’s President & CEO Travis Knight, who directed the studio’s Oscar-nominated Kubo and the Two Strings and upcoming Wildwood, remains aboard to direct.
“Piranesi changed my soul and is one of the books in all the world, of any era, I most cherish,” Kajganich said. “Having Travis’ and Susanna’s trust in adapting it is something I take as an honor of the highest order. They are two of the loveliest, smartest, and most humane people you can imagine, so all of this is an actual dream coming true for me.”
Set in a dreamlike alternative reality, Clarke’s novel tells the story of Piranesi, whose house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls, an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house — a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
The book is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, with over four million copies sold, and was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2021.
In addition to creating the critically acclaimed AMC series The Terror, about the disastrous 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage, Kajganich has written three scripts for director Luca Guadagnino: A Bigger Splash, Suspiria, which he also produced, and the 2022 horror romance Bones and All, starring Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet. His adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel The Riders, which he is producing with Ridley Scott, is set to go into production with Edward Berger directing, Brad Pitt attached to star, and A24 financing and distributing. Also for A24, Kajganich will write Ronnie Spector biopic Be My Baby with Zendaya attached to star and Barry Jenkins directing.
While Laika has begun working in live-action in recent years, the company is best known for its groundbreaking work on the stop-motion features Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link, each of which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Currently in production on its next animated feature, Wildwood, the studio last month enlisted Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to writer and direct Atmosphere, a live-action adaptation of the book by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
The studio’s live-action division also continues to develop projects including action thriller Seventeen; Crumble, to be written and directed by Brian Duffield, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller producing; and an untitled pic marking the directorial debut of Dune scribe Jon Spaihts. Additionally, they’re working on animated feature The Night Gardener, based on an original idea by Ozark‘s Bill Dubuque.
Kajganich is repped by UTA, Anonymous Content, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.
