Before running Laika, Travis Knight made a rap album as Chilly Tee
The man who now heads Laika, the stop-motion studio behind Coraline, first tried his luck in hip-hop. Recording as Chilly Tee, Travis Knight caught the ear of producer Hank Shocklee and released a 1993 album that flopped, then found his real calling moving puppets one frame at a time.
Knight was born in 1973 in Hillsboro, Oregon, the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight. He cut his five-song rap demo in a studio built inside the family mansion, and it travelled from an MCA executive to Shocklee, whose team, the Bomb Squad, agreed to produce a full record. Shocklee thought the young rapper wrote sharp verses but weak choruses. The resulting album, Get Off Mine, sold poorly, and Knight disliked performing, though Shocklee still maintains it has aged well.
After finishing at Portland State University, Knight landed an internship at Will Vinton Studios, a Portland animation house in which his father had invested. He animated for television shows such as The PJs. By 2003 Phil Knight controlled the studio, and Travis joined its board despite no management experience. After Vinton was fired, the Knights rebuilt the company as Laika.
Knight became its vice president of animation in 2005 and served as lead animator and producer on Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls, the last earning an Academy Award nomination. He made his directing debut with Kubo and the Two Strings in 2016, a samurai fantasy pitched by Shannon Tindle, which brought another Oscar nomination. He is now Laika's president and chief executive and has sat on Nike's board since 2015.
His first live-action film was Bumblebee, released in December 2018, where his affection for the original G1 Transformers toys showed; many fans rated it the best of the series. He followed it with Masters of the Universe for Amazon MGM Studios and Mattel, released in June 2026, and has an animated Piranesi adaptation lined up.
Source: Travis Knight
