Laika Taps Brian Duffield To Write & Direct Live-Action Film ‘Crumble’; Lord Miller Producing
Three years after announcing its intention to expand into live-action, the renowned Oregon animation studio Laika has acquired Crumble, an original script by Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You), which he’ll direct for the studio as a live-action feature.
Crumble tells the tale of a married couple who go on a world-traversing adventure in the hope of finding a cure to an ancient curse. Oscar winners Phil Lord and Chris Miller as well as Aditya Sood will produce through their Lord Miller banner, with Duffield also set to produce. Lucy Kitada and Nikki Baida from Lord Miller will serve as executive producers.
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News of the project comes following word in June that Laika’s founder, President and CEO Travis Knight will next helm an animated adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s bestseller Piranesi for the studio. Duffield comes to it after working alongside the Lord Miller team as a producer on Universal’s hit horror comedy Cocaine Bear.
Said Laika’s President, Live Action Film & Series, Matt Levin, in a statement on Crumble, “We’re so excited to partner with Brian and the entire team at Lord Miller on this special film. Brian has such a singular voice and Crumble perfectly embodies the bold, emotional, and inventive storytelling that we champion at LAIKA. Lord Miller is in a class of its own and we could not ask for a better creative team to bring this story to life.”
Stated Duffield, “I’ll never forget seeing Coraline on opening night at the AMC Burbank 16 and wondering who these wonderful new geniuses were. I can’t wait to make a movie with them and hopefully live up to their banner, and I couldn’t be more excited to get to go on a new adventure with my friends at Lord Miller.”
In a joint statement, Lord and Miller added that they’re “so excited to keep collaborating with our friend Brian Duffield who has written a script that is endlessly imaginative, funny and romantic. We have long been fans of LAIKA and Travis Knight’s groundbreaking work in animation and could not be more excited to join forces with them in live action.”
Most recently tapped to co-write, direct, and produce a feature adaptation of Daniel Kraus’s bestseller Whalefall for 20th Century Studios and Imagine Entertainment, as we were first to report, Duffield is coming off the sci-fi horror pic No One Will Save You for 20th, which came in as the most streamed title in the U.S. access all platforms when it premiered on Hulu last fall. Previously making his feature directorial debut with the Paramount genre-bender Spontaneous, he’s also written on titles like The Divergent Series: Insurgent and Jane Got a Gun. In addition to Cocaine Bear, he recently produced the upcoming Borderline, directed by Jimmy Warden and starring Samara Weaving.
The originator of the hit animated Spider-Verse franchise, which has one installment still to come, Lord Miller’s next project is the Lord-and-Miller-helmed Amazon MGM sci-fi pic Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, which hits theaters on March 20, 2026.
Garnering Oscar nominations for its stop-motion features Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link, Laika is set to release its next animated film, Wildwood, in 2025. Currently, the company is also developing the animated feature The Night Gardener, based on an original idea from Ozark‘s Bill Dubuque, as well as a live-action adaptation of the action thriller novel Seventeen from screenwriter John Brownlow.
Duffield is represented by UTA, Circle of Confusion, and Behr Abramson Levy Johnson. Lord and Miller are repped by UTA and Ziffren Brittenham.
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