Seventeen

Seventeen marks LAIKA's first venture into live-action filmmaking. The Portland-based stop-motion animation studio, known for Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings, and the upcoming Wildwood, secured the rights to John Brownlow's debut thriller novel in a competitive bidding war in March 2021. The story follows an elite assassin known only as "Seventeen" -- named for the sixteen killers who came before him -- who officially does not exist but is used by every government. He is the most feared hitman in the world, yet the novel explores the soul beneath the lethal exterior. LAIKA president Travis Knight described the project as "a thriller with soul, a sinuous adrenaline-fueled actioner with a sincere heart beating underneath its rippling pectorals." Brownlow, a screenwriter whose credits include the Anya Taylor-Joy miniseries The Miniaturist and the Gwyneth Paltrow/Daniel Craig film Sylvia, is also writing the screenplay adaptation. No director has been publicly attached to the project. The film is being developed through LAIKA Live Action, an LA-based subsidiary introduced in 2023 specifically to create live-action films and series alongside the studio's ongoing animation work at their 150,000-square-foot facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. The novel was published by Hanover Square in the US and Hodder & Stoughton in the UK.