LAIKA has bolstered its Animation Division’s creative roster with key hires: Animation director Pete Candeland, known for his Gorillaz music videos, and the Annie Award-winning duo known as Headless, Victor Maldonado & Alfredo Torres, have joined the studio to develop animated feature projects. The appointments, effective immediately, were announced today by LAIKA CEO & President Travis Knight.
Maldonado and Torres won Best Animated Feature at the 2007 Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars, for Nocturna, about an orphan boy who is afraid of the dark. The Los Angeles-based filmmakers have directed three episodes each of Love, Death + Robots, a Primetime Emmy Award-winning animated series for Netflix, which David Fincher executive produced.
They also worked on the Guillermo del Toro-created 2016 series Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia, produced by DreamWorks Animation and Double Dare You Productions. This episode “Win, Lose or Draal” won the animation duo an Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production.
Additionally, Maldonado and Torres worked as animation segment directors on the drama A Monster Calls by Spanish director J.A. Bayona, starring Sigourney Weaver and Liam Neeson, which won nine Goya Awards. Most recently, they were developing features and series at Skydance Animation.
Pete Candeland is a multi-faceted director adept at 2D, 3D and live-action mixed animation. His high-concept style with strong narrative sensibilities is fully on display in his hugely popular music videos for Gorillaz, his Rock Band game franchise spots and his emotive BBC trailers. All his work is marked by striking use of the state-of-the-art technology married to his distinctive visual style.
LAIKA was founded in 2005 in Oregon by President & CEO Travis Knight. The studio’s five films: Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Missing Link (2019) have all been nominated for the Academy Award for Outstanding Animated Feature. Kubo and the Two Strings won the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film and received an additional Oscar nomination for Visual Effects. Missing Link was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film. LAIKA was awarded a Scientific and Technology Oscar in 2016 for its innovation in 3D printing.
The studio is currently in production on its sixth animated film Wildwood, based on the book series by Colin Meloy and illustrator Carson Ellis, and in development on The Night Gardener, an animated film from an original idea by Bill Dubuque, creator of the hit series Ozark. As part of its move into live-action features, LAIKA is developing the action thriller novel Seventeen by screenwriter John Brownlow.
Learn more at laika.com.
