Coraline has been running in theaters for about six weeks now, and so far has brought in $70.7 million domestically (at the time of this writing) and worldwide at $7.6 million. The movie hasn’t even been released in all the corners of the world yet (ahem, such as Australia), so we can expect that figure to rise. Opening weekend came in at $16.8 million, which is about $7 million more than anticipated. With DVD sales coming up, not to mention video game and other merchandise sales, it looks like this little project of Henry Selick’s has proved it’s worth to Laika. I think we can expect more great work like this from the studio in the future.

In similar news, Travis Knight who worked as lead animator on Coraline, serves on Laika’s board of directors and also happens to be Laika owner Phil Knight’s son, has been promoted to president of the studio. More info here.

Things haven’t been all peachy however. Last December, the day after the company Christmas party, Laika laid off around 65 artists (and some good friends) from it’s CG division, and canceled the long troubled project ‘Jack and Ben’. Here is the full scoop from the Oregonian. Jack and Ben had been in the works since mid-2005, and was one of the first things I worked on when I joined the studio that October. I’m sad it got tossed, it had a really innovative visual style that I think audiences would have appreciated. The good news is, Laika is still planning to create CG movies.

LAIKA has just released a second trailer that, I feel, is much truer to the film. Here it is:

You can also watch the first trailer which is a bit more flashy / in your face:

Then there’s also the teaser trailer that came out in the spring of ‘08 which is also good:

What can I say? It’s going to be a great movie. Selick did an amazing job adapting it to the silver screen and has added his own creepy twists. Neil Gaiman wrote the original book. Really a match made in heaven. I was fortunate enough to be able to work on the movie as a CG modeler for roughly a year and a half. It was quite an experience. And I should mention that we played A LOT of ping pong on our lunch breaks.