Travis Knight to Direct LAIKA’s Animated Film Version of Susanna Clarke’s NYT Bestseller Piranesi
June 20 2024 - 11:00AM
Business Wire
“Piranesi flooded me, as the tides flood the
halls, with a scouring grief, leaving gleaming gifts in its wake…
rich, wondrous, full of aching joy and sweet sorrow. " - The New
York Times Book Review
LAIKA has acquired the international best-selling fantasy novel
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. LAIKA’s President & CEO
Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings, Bumblebee) will direct the
animated feature film. A New York Times and Sunday Times
best-seller with over four million copies sold, Piranesi was
awarded the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
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PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke will be
adapted as an animated feature film by LAIKA to be directed by
Travis Knight. (Courtesy of Bloomsbury)
“Piranesi is a treasure, and very dear to me,” said Knight. “As
a filmmaker, I can scarcely imagine a more joyful experience than
wandering through the worlds Susanna dreamed into being. She’s one
of my all-time favorite authors, and with Piranesi, Susanna has
created a beautiful, devastating and ultimately life-affirming work
of art. I’m humbled that she chose LAIKA as her home.”
“Animation is one of my favourite things,” said Clarke. “I've
been inspired by so many animated movies; and LAIKA has produced
such extraordinary work -- movies like Coraline and Kubo and the
Two Strings, full of beauty and wonder and weirdness. I'm thrilled
that Piranesi has found a home with them and I can't wait to see
what they do.”
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange
& Mr Norrell, Piranesi is an intoxicating, hypnotic novel set
in a dreamlike alternative reality.
Piranesi’s 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.
Praise for Piranesi
“Clarke's imagination is prodigious; her pacing is masterly, and
she knows how to employ dry humor in the service of majesty.” ― The
New York Times
"Enthralling [and] transcendent… Clarke's writing is clear,
sharp ― she can cleave your heart in a few short words” ―
NPR.org
“Nobody writes about magic the way Clarke does... She writes
about magic as if she's actually worked it.” ― TIME Magazine
“Clarke wraps a twisty mystery inside a metaphysical fantasy in
her extraordinary new novel... Sure to be recognized as one of the
year's most inventive.” ― Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“…to abide in these pages is to find oneself happily detained in
awe.” ―The Washington Post
"Piranesi hit my mind and soul like a thunderbolt. It is a work
of deep power." ― EW.com
Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham. A nomadic
childhood was spent in towns in Northern England and Scotland. She
was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and has worked in
various areas of non-fiction publishing, including Gordon Fraser
and Quarto. In 1990, she left London and went to Turin to teach
English to stressed-out executives of the Fiat motor company. The
following year she taught English in Bilbao. She returned to
England in 1992 and spent the rest of that year in County Durham,
in a house that looked out over the North Sea. There she began
working on her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,
called by Neil Gaiman (Coraline; American Gods) “Unquestionably the
finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy
years.”
From 1993 to 2003, Susanna Clarke was an editor at Simon and
Schuster's Cambridge office, where she worked on their cookery
list. She has published seven short stories and novellas in US
anthologies. One, The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse, first
appeared in a limited-edition, illustrated chapbook from Green Man
Press. Another, Mr. Simonelli or The Fairy Widower, was shortlisted
for a World Fantasy Award in 2001. Piranesi (Bloomsbury; 2020)), a
New York Times best-seller with over four million copies sold, was
the winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Susanna Clarke is represented by Nick Marston and Katie Battcock
at Curtis Brown.
Images:
Susanna Clarke image (attached): Photo courtesy of Sarah Lee
Book cover: Courtesy of Bloomsbury Travis Knight: Photo by
Austin Hargrave
About LAIKA
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.
LAIKA is currently in production on its next animated film
Wildwood, based on the fantasy novels by Colin Meloy. The studio is
developing The Night Gardener, an animated film from an original
idea by Bill Dubuque, creator of the hit series Ozark. LAIKA has
launched a Live Action subsidiary with a range of projects in
development including a feature film based on the action thriller
novel Seventeen by screenwriter John Brownlow. LAIKA.com
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Maggie Begley/MBC Maggie@mbcprinc.com; 310.749.3055