Laika's Stop-Motion Fantasy Wildwood Opens October 23 After Years of Work
Laika's stop-motion fantasy Wildwood reaches cinemas on October 23, and its director says the film took 16 years from first script to final shot.
Travis Knight directed and produced the film. He is also President and CEO of Laika, the independent animation studio he has run for about 20 years. His earlier feature as a director was Kubo and the Two Strings. Knight spoke about the project's long road in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, which reported that Wildwood required 231 weeks of production, starting a little over five years ago.
The story comes from Colin Meloy's 2011 fantasy novel, adapted for the screen by Chris Butler. Peyton Elizabeth Lee plays Prue, a teenager in Portland, Oregon, who goes into an enchanted forest to rescue her baby brother after he is abducted. Laika describes the film as a love letter to the studio's home just outside Portland.
Stop-motion means every movement is built by hand, one frame at a time, and the scale here is large. According to the interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the production used 233 handmade puppets, with hundreds of thousands of replacement faces to capture different expressions. The crew built 132 practical sets, including 728 miniature trees in 10 species native to the Pacific Northwest. The climactic battle alone runs to more than 400 shots. More than 1,000 people worked on the production.
Money and marketing are part of the story too. Wildwood is Laika's most expensive film to date, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Laika teamed with Fathom for distribution and handled its own marketing. Fathom Entertainment releases the film in the United States, and Black Bear distributes it in the U.K., as Variety reported.
Knight has been doing the press rounds. He discussed the film at the Annecy animation festival with moderator Edith Bowman in front of a sold-out crowd, and he also talked about the 16-year journey at IGN Fall Fanfest 2026. Laika describes Wildwood as the studio's most ambitious stop-motion film yet.
For anyone planning a trip, tickets are already on sale for cinemas, and the film opens on October 23.
