Laika, the Portland-based studio behind Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings, has unveiled Wildwood, its biggest and most ambitious stop-motion film yet, after 16 years of development under director Travis Knight. The epic fantasy closed the ninth Animation Is Film Festival at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, where the audience greeted it with loud cheers.
According to INQUIRER.net USA, which covered the screening and the studio visit, the film is adapted by Chris Butler from the New York Times bestselling novel by Colin Meloy and illustrator Carson Ellis. It follows Prue McKeel, voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, a determined girl who chases a murder of crows into the forests beyond Portland after they steal her baby brother. Her classmate Curtis Mehlberg, voiced by Jacob Tremblay, goes with her, and the forest hides an ancient civilization ruled by the Dowager Governess Alexandra, voiced by Carey Mulligan.
How the story began
Knight, 53, president and CEO of Laika and the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, said he read the first 133 pages of Meloy's manuscript in 2010, when the studio had only made one film, Coraline. He fell in love with the story instantly but had, in his words, no idea how to make it.
“We developed it over time, over 16 years. I finally felt like seven years ago, we were ready to make this movie,” Knight told the crowd at the museum's David Geffen Theater, in a conversation with Peter Debruge, Variety's former chief film critic and now director of the SXSW Film & TV Festival.
“I got the team together and I said, okay, we've made five films at this point. We've built the tools, the technology, the tricks to make a film of this scale. Dudes, we are making Wildwood and the universe smiled a knowing smile and said, fine, but first you must suffer beautifully. And we did in making this movie.”
Wikipedia notes Laika announced the project in September 2021, with Knight directing and Chris Butler writing the screenplay, and that Knight described it in 2024 as the most ambitious film the studio had ever made.
A love letter to Portland, and to childhood
Knight said the story's connection to his hometown drew him in. He grew up with the fantasy stories his mother read to him, Tolkien, Lewis, Baum and Carroll, and realized that Wildwood unfolded in Portland, Oregon, a city he joked felt like discovering Rivendell just off Burnside Street.
The film is Laika's sixth stop-motion feature and its first in seven years, and reviewers say the wait paid off. Roger Ebert's review calls it a gorgeous fairy tale and the most ambitious stop-motion film ever made, from the artisans behind Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings.
The numbers behind the craft
The production statistics, released in the studio's production notes, are staggering. More than 1,000 artists, craftspeople, technicians and filmmakers contributed, and 49 animators brought the characters to life frame by frame. The film set a Guinness World Record with 142,000 3D-printed face models, and Laika was the first major studio to adapt 3D printing for puppet faces.
The team also built 233 handmade puppets, 728 handcrafted trees, and used 112 stages draped in more than 10,570 linear feet of black curtain, over two miles of it. 146 cameras photographed the film across 1,155 production days, and 3,000 feathers went into a single character, The General.
All of this happens inside an unprepossessing warehouse complex in a drab industrial office park outside Portland. Behind massive curtains stand miniature sets of obsessive detail: a flickering lampshade with a real bulb inside, mushrooms sprouting at the base of a decaying tree, tiny dollar bills on the counter of a miniature Voodoo Doughnut, a discarded plastic fork on a sidewalk, tire marks on a muddy road in North Wood village.
A star-studded voice cast
Beyond Lee, Tremblay and Mulligan, the cast includes Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Maya Erskine, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Tantoo Cardinal and Richard E. Grant. The film also boosts Asian American representation, with Lee, Erskine (who voices Prue's mother) and Awkwafina in major roles.
The baby brother, Mac McKeel, is voiced by Knight's own son, Arthur. Knight said he chased his one-year-old around for four months with an iPhone, recording him. The baby's on-screen scream, he admitted, came from the boy's genuine fury at having his diaper changed.
“He's six years old now, by the way. That gives you a sense of how long it took us to make this movie,” Knight said.
Why Prue and Curtis will travel well
Deborah Cook, the costume designer, said dressing contemporary Portland teenagers was its own challenge, balancing relatability with the iconic look leads need. Production designer Nelson Lowry, an Annie Award winner for Kubo, said the two leads start as certain kinds of characters and end up very different, a journey he called notable and very emotional.
Brad Schiff, head of animation and an Oscar nominee for Kubo, said the two grow up in very different ways. “One's a little stronger, one's a little tragic. But they're both very powerful.”
Brian McLean, director of rapid prototyping, said every metric makes this the studio's biggest project: the biggest puppets, the most puppets, the most faces ever created for a stop-motion production. Oliver Jones, head of character and practical effects, said the story is universal. “The arc that Prue goes through and how far you would go for the ones that you love is something that we can all identify with,” he said. Bilyonaryo likewise describes the film as Laika's most ambitious stop-motion effort, one that brings a magical forest to life.
The power of stories that make people feel seen
Knight closed the festival conversation with a confession. He was a lonely kid, a self-described weirdo, and stories were what made him feel connected.
“We do not make these things to sit on a shelf like a Fabergé egg. We make these things to connect with other people,” he said.
“When someone says, 'Something you did meant something to me,' it made me feel less alone. It made me feel like I was not the only one who was afraid. I'm not the only one who has lost someone and still kept walking. That means more to me than anyone could ever imagine.”
Frequently asked questions
What is Laika's Wildwood about?
A girl named Prue McKeel chases a murder of crows into a magical forest outside Portland after they kidnap her baby brother, discovering an ancient civilization hidden there.
How long did Wildwood take to make?
Director Travis Knight spent 16 years developing the project, first reading the source novel's manuscript in 2010, and the production itself ran 1,155 days.
Who voices the characters in Wildwood?
The cast includes Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Tom Waits and Richard E. Grant, among others.