Stop-motion masters Laika are making a movie of Susanna Clarke’s very odd Piranesi

Stop-motion animators Laika remain one of the few such studios who regularly get to apply their arts to big-budget Hollywood movies—having most recently hit theaters with the charming (if fiscally disastrous) Missing Link back in 2019. Now, Laika has announced its latest project, and it’s a doozy: A film version of Susanna Clarke’s 2020 novel Piranesi.

For more manageable in size and scope that Clarke’s masterpiece, Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell, Piranesi is still a pretty daunting book to tackle. Told via first-person journal entries, the book centers on the titular character, a man who lives in a mystical realm called The House, an infinitely huge structure of stone archways, flooding caverns, and odd statuary that he’s been tasked with exploring by another man, known as the Other. As Piranesi explores, he begins finding things that challenge his basic belief that he has always lived in the House, while also meticulously cataloguing and delving into its secrets.

The trick here, as readers of Piranesi will know, is that a lot of the interest generated by the novel comes from how it depicts its title character’s fractured and bizarre mindset, which can frequently be as bewildering and mysterious as the House in which he resides. Translating that to a visual medium is going to be a hell of a chore—although, at the same time, we can’t help but imagine what Laika, who are absolute masters at crafting physical sets for their puppets to move around on, will do with such a fantastical setting. The film is being directed by Travis Knight, CEO of Laika, who dips back and forth between studio fare and stop-motion work for his home studio. (He directed Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, and is set to release a new Laika movie, Wildwood, next year.)

For her part (per THR), Clarke issued a statement today praising the studio: “Animation is one of my favorite things. 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.”