Travis Knight, who directed Kubo and the Two Strings and has led Laika as president and CEO since its founding, stood before an Annecy audience on June 29 and made an extraordinary claim. "This is the biggest and most ambitious thing we've ever done," he said. From the studio behind Coraline, ParaNorman, and five consecutive Oscar-nominated features, that phrase carries weight.
Wildwood is Laika's sixth stop-motion film and its first since Missing Link in 2019. Adapted by Chris Butler from the novel series by Colin Meloy, the film follows seventh-grader Prue McKeel on a desperate rescue mission into the Impassable Wilderness, an enchanted forest hidden just beyond Portland, Oregon, after a murder of crows steals her baby brother.
The voice cast spans generations and registers. Carey Mulligan voices the Dowager Governess Alexandra. Angela Bassett takes on The General, a golden eagle whose puppet alone required 3,000 production hours to construct. It measures 34 inches beak-to-tail with a 64-inch wingspan and incorporates 3,794 individually placed elements. Richard E. Grant, Awkwafina, Amandla Stenberg, Tom Waits, Charlie Day, Mahershala Ali, Maya Erskine, Rob Delaney, and Jemaine Clement round out the ensemble.
Six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel serves as director of photography. It is an unusually prestigious collaboration for an animated production and a signal of how seriously Laika is positioning the film.
Wildwood opens in U.S. theaters October 23 through Fathom Entertainment, with FilmNation Entertainment handling international sales.