Laika's Wildwood Earns PG-13 Rating as Animation Directors Gather in Savannah
Laika's "Wildwood" has received a PG-13 rating, the first of the Portland, Ore., studio's feature films to carry that mark in the 17 years it has made features. The rating was given for strong fantasy violence and bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language, Variety reported on Oct. 22.
The film runs 140 minutes, which ties the record for the longest English-language animated film ever made. Travis Knight directed it and also runs the studio.
Knight will be one of five filmmakers on stage at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival in Georgia, which runs Oct. 24-31. The festival is in its 29th edition. Variety's Pixels and Pencils panel, an animation directors' conversation now in its fifth year, brings the group together. The others are Brad Bird for "Ray Gunn," Daniel Chong for "Hoppers," Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado for "Forgotten Island," and Leah Nelson for "Tangles."
Bird has been developing "Ray Gunn" since 1996. The idea grew out of a B-52s song and a tune by Henry Mancini. He once pitched it as "The Maltese Falcon" meets "Buck Rogers." Sam Rockwell plays Raymond Gunn, a gumshoe investigating a murder in Metropia, a version of 1939 where humans and aliens share the streets. Netflix will release the film on Dec. 18, after screenings at the London Film Festival and a limited run in 70mm, a large film format. It has a PG rating for suggestive material.
Chong created the cartoon "We Bare Bears" for Cartoon Network and made his feature directing debut with "Hoppers." That Pixar film opened to $46 million in March, the best start for a Pixar original since "Coco" in 2017. It passed $500 million worldwide in about five weeks, according to Variety. Its story follows Mabel, played by Piper Curda, a college student who uploads her mind into a robot beaver. She wants to talk to animals and stop developers from bulldozing their forest.
Why does a panel like this matter? Variety noted that "Flow" director Gints Zilbalodis took part in the 2024 Pixels and Pencils panel before winning the Oscar for best animated feature. Four of the five eventual nominees at the 98th Academy Awards spoke at the previous year's event. The winner, "KPop Demon Hunters," was among them.
The panel is a chance for directors to talk about how their films were made, and it has a track record of featuring names that later reach the Oscar stage. This year's lineup covers a wide range, from a Pixar feature to a 1939-set detective story and a long film from a studio known for stop-motion. The festival runs through Oct. 31.
