"Wildwood" Director Travis Knight Says He Is "Not Embracing" AI
Travis Knight, the director of the stop-motion fantasy "Wildwood," says he is "not embracing" Hollywood's use of artificial intelligence. He said so in an interview on Wednesday night, October 21, 2026, at the film's opening-night U.S. premiere at AFI Fest, according to Variety.
The premiere took place at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. AFI Fest lists the screening for 7:30 p.m., and the festival says "Wildwood" opens its 40th edition. AFI Fest 2026 is presented by Canva.
The film follows a young girl, played by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, who sets off into a forbidden forest after a murder of crows, the name for a flock of crows, takes her baby brother. It is a stop-motion feature, a style in which characters and sets are moved by hand one frame at a time. The voice cast includes Jacob Tremblay, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Carey Mulligan, Maya Erskine, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Amandla Stenberg and Tantoo Cardinal.
Knight is president of Laika, the animation studio behind the film. He also presented "Wildwood" in person at the Annecy festival in France earlier this year, and Variety reported on that appearance in June.
On AI, Knight drew a clear line. He said generative AI becomes a concern when it replaces the artist. A computer, he argued, cannot speak about humanity and has never felt loss, love or pain. Asked whether the technology could have helped speed up the film while keeping its quality high, he said the idea "fills me with rage," according to Variety.
Knight also said it took 16 years to complete "Wildwood." That long timeline is the kind of detail that makes stop-motion so slow to produce. Every second of screen time is built from many individually posed frames, so a film of this kind can take years of work by large teams.
The interview gives a sense of where one of the industry's most visible animation leaders stands as studios test AI tools across production. Knight's remarks came from a stage at a major festival, on the night his film was first shown to an American audience.
