{"id":133294,"date":"2025-09-10T17:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T17:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/133294\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T17:32:09","slug":"laika-continues-push-into-live-action-with-lulu-wangs-audition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/133294\/","title":{"rendered":"Laika Continues Push Into Live Action with Lulu Wang’s\u00a0‘Audition’"},"content":{"rendered":"

For now, Laika<\/a> is still known for its stop-motion animated features such as \u201cKubo and the Two Strings,\u201d \u201cParaNorman,\u201d and \u201cCoraline.\u201d But that may soon change. The company has been steadily developing a slate of live-action features<\/a> to complement its animated movies, and its latest may be among the most high profile it has announced.<\/p>\n

Laika has tapped \u201cThe Farewell\u201d and \u201cExpats\u201d director Lulu Wang<\/a> to direct a feature adaptation of \u201cAudition,\u201d the book from author Katie Kitamura released this year that was a finalist on the longlist for the Booker Prize. Already the studio has nabbed two big stars to lead the project, Lucy Liu<\/a> and Charles Melton<\/a>, and a producer who is as big of a fan as you can get, Barack Obama<\/a> on behalf of his Higher Ground<\/a> banner.<\/p>\n

\"Larry<\/a> \"'Wildwood'\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cAudition\u201d is a twisty thriller that follows a celebrated actress enjoying a charmed, bohemian life in Manhattan with her creative husband. That is until a mysterious young man appears, claiming to be her long-lost son. What begins as a misguided reunion spirals into an enthralling mystery about identity, guilt, and the roles we perform. Martyna Majok, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, is co-writing the adaptation with Wang. <\/p>\n

Obama included \u201cAudition\u201d in his annual summer reading list for 2025, calling it a \u201cquiet novel about the ways we hide our true selves from others \u2014 and ourselves.\u201d High praise.<\/p>\n

For Wang, this is just her second feature after \u201cThe Farewell,\u201d having created and directed the Amazon Prime Video limited series \u201cExpats.\u201d<\/a> While \u201cThe Farewell\u201d was on original story, with \u201cExpats,\u201d she certainly showed her skill at directing an adaptation \u2014 in that case of Janice Y.K. Lee\u2019s novel \u201cThe Expatriates.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing Katie Kitamura\u2019s \u2018Audition\u2019 to the screen is a thrilling challenge,\u201d Wang said in a statement. \u201cWhat makes it feel possible, and electrifying, is working with Lucy Liu and Charles Melton. They\u2019re both such magnetic performers and I can\u2019t imagine better collaborators to step into this story with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laika has a number of live-action projects in development, but only a few have been announced so far. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck\u2019s next film<\/a> is for Laika and is an adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid\u2019s new novel \u201cAtmosphere.\u201d \u201cDune\u201d writer Jon Spaihts has an original movie that was the first project announced by the studio. There\u2019s an adaptation of the action thriller novel \u201cSeventeen\u201d in development that screenwriter John Brownlow is adapting. And Brian Duffield (\u201cSpontaneous\u201d) is writing and directing an original script called \u201cCrumble\u201d that has Phil Lord and Chris Miller attached as producers.<\/p>\n

Laika is still working on its animated features that are its bread and butter and, as IndieWire reported, is working on re-introducing itself to audiences<\/a> after a box office misfire with its last project \u201cMissing Link.\u201d The company\u2019s sixth animated feature, \u201cWildwood,\u201d is in the works now and directed by Travis Knight, who himself is also juggling the live-action \u201cMasters of the Universe\u201d film for Amazon MGM.<\/p>\n

Higher Ground and LAIKA will produce \u201cAudition\u201d in association with Wang\u2019s production company Local Time. Higher Ground\u2019s Vinnie Malhotra and Anikah McLaren, LAIKA\u2019s Travis Knight and Matt Levin, and Lulu Wang<\/a> are producers. Lucy Liu, LAIKA\u2019s Jeremy Kipp Walker and author Katie Kitamura are executive producers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For now, Laika is still known for its stop-motion animated features such as \u201cKubo and the Two Strings,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,11967,92192,134,92193,92194,72987,92195,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-133294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-barack-obama","11":"tag-charles-melton","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-higher-ground","14":"tag-laika","15":"tag-lucy-liu","16":"tag-lulu-wang","17":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}