Studio Briefing for July 20 reports that Phil Knight, founder of athletic footware company Nike, is gearing up to create a stop-motion/computer-animation hybrid animated feature to be released in 2007.

The full text of the article is presented here since Studio Briefing doesn’t appear to have an archive function:

NIKE FOUNDER MAKES RUN AT FEATURE CARTOONS

Nike founder Phil Knight has changed the name of the commercial animation company he now controls — it’s best known for its California Raisins ads — and plans to produce a feature-length animated film, USA Today reports. Knight’s company, now called Laika, is moving ahead with a $70 million feature, Caroline, that will combine computer and stop-motion animation and could be in theaters by 2007, the newspaper said. He faces formidable competition from DreamWorks Animation, Pixar, Blue Sky and the major studios, which all have computer-animated features in the works. But interim CEO Bob Harold told USA Today: “When Nike was small, Phil didn’t want to be Adidas. He wanted to beat Adidas. He knows who the competition is.”