Laika Unveils New 'Wildwood' Trailer, Stopping Motion Again After Six Years

Laika has released a new trailer for Wildwood, its first stop-motion animated film in six years, heading to theatres on 23 October through Fathom Entertainment. The studio calls the project its most ambitious undertaking to date — 136 locations, 231 practical puppets, and 54 hero characters, each built and moved by hand, frame by frame. (Variety)

Stop-motion animation is a technique in which physical puppets are repositioned in tiny increments and photographed one frame at a time, creating the illusion of movement when the frames are played back. Laika has been one of the few studios in the world keeping the craft alive at a feature-film scale.

Wildwood follows a girl named Prue, voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, who teams up with her classmate Curtis, voiced by Jacob Tremblay, on a rescue mission to save her baby brother from a murder of crows — the collective noun for a flock of crows — that has spirited him into a mysterious forest outside Portland, Oregon. The film is adapted from the illustrated novel by Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, with artwork by Carson Ellis. (Variety)

The voice cast stacks deep. Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Richard E. Grant, Awkwafina, Amandla Stenberg, Tom Waits and Charlie Day all feature alongside Lee and Tremblay. (Variety)

Travis Knight, Laika's president and CEO, directs. Knight previously helmed Laika's Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), which earned two Oscar nominations — for best animated feature and best achievement in visual effects — and he returned to animation after directing the live-action Masters of the Universe, released in June. (Variety)

Laika's track record in the animated-feature category at the Academy Awards runs long. Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings were all nominated, and the studio's 2019 release Missing Link — its last film before Wildwood — won the Golden Globe for best animated feature. (Variety)

What makes Wildwood stand out is the sheer scale of physical production behind it. A film with 136 distinct locations and 231 puppets means months of set-building, armature fabrication, and animator hours measured in the hundreds of thousands. In a market increasingly saturated with computer-generated imagery and AI-assisted tools, Laika's output remains stubbornly handmade — the studio's own teaser trailer description, uploaded to YouTube in May, leaned into that contrast, telling audiences that in the growing age of AI, they should see the film in theatres because "money talks." (Laika on YouTube)

The 23 October release through Fathom Entertainment — a distributor best known for event-cinema and faith-based releases — positions Wildwood in the autumn corridor, ahead of the holiday family-film rush. Whether that slot gives it room to build word of mouth against bigger-budget CG competitors is a question the box office will answer soon enough.

For now, the puppets are built, the crows are waiting, and the forest is ready for its close-up.