Why Boffo 'Coraline' Box Office Suggests A Potential Cultural Comeback for Laika

Is Laika about to become a "generational nostalgia" brand for the cool kids who grew up with 'ParaNorman' and 'Kubo and the Two Strings'?

The most exciting weekend box office news was a shockingly successful Fathom Events reissue for Coraline. I took my eight-year-old niece to a Saturday afternoon matinee, and I almost got sold out despite buying tickets over two hours ahead of time. Spoiler: She loved it, and the third act spun its dazzling “This feels like a sleep paralysis-ish lucid fever dream!” web that I remembered so vividly in 2009. The stop-motion animated masterpiece earned a whopping $12.5 million over its Thurs-Sun rerelease, earning more on Sunday ($3.5 million) and Saturday ($3.3 million) than it did on Thursday ($2.9 million) and Friday ($2.6 million). With $20 million worldwide, including a record high for any reissue in Mexico, the engagement will add new dates and territories.

It’s a domestic record for a Fathom reissue and on par with the $8.7 million 25th anniversary of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace this past May and the $10.5 million Fri-Sun reissue of Avatar in September of 2022. Coraline earned $124 million worldwide in its early 2009 release. You’d have to go back to the 2011-2013 wave of 3-D reissues for The Lion King, The Phantom Menace, Titanic and Jurassic Park to find such bountiful reissues. Those films earned a shit-ton more money in their respective original theatrical releases. Hell, among the many reissues for Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas (actually directed by Henry Sellick, who’d eventually helm… Coraline), none opened higher than $5.5 million or topped $15 million total.

Does this mean anything beyond older kids and young adults who have fond memories of Coraline - akin to Nightmare Before Christmas for the previous generation(s) -- flocking to multiplexes? Maybe it’s about kids too young to have seen it in theaters, finally seeing the most dazzling 3-D I’ve ever seen in an animated film on the big screen. Or is Laika about to return in a big(ger) way? The feature included the teaser for Wildwood. Based on Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s novel, it’ll mark Laika’s first theatrical feature since the blink-and-you-miss-it Missing Link. Does the bonkers box office for Coraline imply that there’s generational nostalgia for the brand itself?

The Laika films (not counting the Tim Burton-directed The Corpse Bride in late 2005) were commercial challenges in the best of times. They were new-to-you or outright original narratives presenting themselves as edgier and more challenging than your stereotypical Pixar sequel or DreamWorks caper. That went double for parents whose biggest concern was that a theatrical animated film would not cause any extreme emotional reactions in their kids. When Disney released The Nightmare Before Christmas under their Touchtone banner in 1993, they were considered not about scared kids but angry parents. Add too many childless film critics who quickly argue that the films might frighten or disturb theoretical youngsters alongside a consumer marketplace pivoting away from original, non-sequel, and comparatively less established animated brands.

None of their $55-$60 million films had ever been outright blockbusters. ParaNorman — the best “scary movie for kids” flick ever and ahead of the curve concerning the coming ‘war on women’ political climate — earned $109 million in late 2012. The Boxtrolls was a seemingly lighter comedy that doubled as a prescient parable for post-World War I Germany drifting into Nazi rule. It would earn $112 million in late 2014. Kubo and the Two Strings, directed by company founder Travis Knight, closed out the summer of 2016 but earned just $77 million. Missing Link, distributed not by Focus Features but by United Artists, earned just $25 million on a $100 million budget, which not even its Best Animated Film Golden Globe victory could make up for.

Considering how much non-sequel, non-IP animation has struggled theatrically since 2018 (Coco remains the last original blockbuster toon), that we’re getting any new Laika is a gift. There is no distributor for Wildwood or the Travis Knight-directed adaption of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. Lisa Laman suggested in the most recent podcast episode that A24 might want to consider it since it aligns with their “studio for cool kid” narrative. Here’s the $60 million question: Did everyone who showed up for Coraline this weekend merely want to see Coraline? Or… amid a wave of nostalgia for the last decade’s franchises and brands, is there potential for Laika to ride again amid a generation of older kids (or outright adults) who grew up or came of age adoring Laika’s unique-unto-themselves animated pleasures?

The generation that grew up with Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls is now old enough to have fond memories of those films in the same way folks my age grew up adoring the “slightly scary and doesn’t condescend to its younger viewers” likes of The Monster Squad and Labyrinth. They also, relatively speaking, have buying power and (where applicable) kids of their own. 2010s nostalgia, especially for family-friendly franchises, currently rules the box office. This next batch of Laika films could (alongside PVOD and licensing revenue) at least return to something comparable to their 2010s-era box office. As hyperbolically optimistic as this may be, a reissue of Coraline just earned “back in theaters” grosses on par with Avatar and Star Wars. You don’t suppose…?