Longtime Netflix growth government Matt Levin has joined LAIKA as President Stay-Motion Movie & Sequence, because the award-winning animation studio expands its efforts in live-action world. Whereas presently in manufacturing on its sixth animated film, Wildwood, the studio can also be creating its first live-action undertaking, a movie primarily based on acclaimed screenwriter John Brownlow’s (The Miniaturist, Sylvia) motion thriller novel “Seventeen.”
Levin will report on to President & CEO Travis Knight (director of Kubo and the Two Strings and Bumblebee), who made the announcement as we speak.
Levin served as Director, Unique Impartial Movie at Netflix from 2014 to 2022, the place he co-founded the Unique Impartial Movie division and helped develop it right into a “full-scale mini-major studio.” Throughout his tenure at Netflix, Levin promoted and oversaw growth and manufacturing of 25 movies, together with the upcoming Gareth Evans’ Havoc starring Tom Hardy, Forest Whitaker, and Timothy Olyphant; the action-thriller Kate starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Woody Harrelson; Gerald’s Recreation from author/director Mike Flanagan, primarily based on Stephen King’s novel; Do Revenge and Somebody Nice from author/director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson; Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Pondering of Ending Issues starring Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, and Toni Collette; Tamara Jenkins’ Personal Life starring Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti; Nicole Holofcener’s The Land of Regular Habits, starring Ben Mendelsohn and Edie Falco: and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning I Don’t Really feel at Residence in This World Anymore from author/director Macon Blair. As well as, Levin introduced in total offers with acclaimed motion filmmaker Gareth Evans and actor/producer Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.
“Matt Levin is an superior dude,” stated Knight. “Each a steely-eyed pragmatist and a starry-eyed dreamer, Matt is the right associate to spearhead LAIKA’s live-action division. His distinctive management abilities, inventive sensitivity, and sharp storytelling thoughts will information our studio to the subsequent section of its evolution and into thrilling new genres, media, and codecs. At seventeen years outdated, LAIKA is grunting our approach via the disaffected teenager stage of our growth. Matt’s gonna assist us turn out to be a correct grown-up.”
“I am thrilled to be approaching board at this thrilling second for LAIKA,” stated Levin. “I’ve liked and admired LAIKA’s daring, authentic, and ground-breaking animated movies because the studio got here on the scene. I am excited to honor and construct on that legacy as we forge forward into live-action movies and collection on this promising new chapter.”
Earlier than Netflix, Levin held positions at Ben Browning’s New York-based impartial manufacturing and financing firm Wayfare Leisure, Focus Options, and Anthony Bregman’s manufacturing shingle Seemingly Story, the place he labored on movies together with Sebastian Cordero’s sci-fi thriller Europa Report, Joe Wright’s Hanna; Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.
Supply LAIKA
Debbie Diamond Sarto is information editor at Animation World Community.
