LAIKA’s latest ambitious stop-motion adventure, Wildwood, will now be hitting theaters later than expected. Although it was initially planned to finally release in 2025, the studio has now confirmed to ComicBook.com that the long-gestating adaptation of the novel by Colin Meloy will not see the light of day until sometime in 2026. It’s the latest twist for a film that has been in development since 2011, began production back in 2021, and only just last year received its first teaser. Hailing from CEO Travis Knight, who also previously directed Bumblebee and Kubo and the Two Strings, it will mark the animation company’s sixth feature film production and their first in seven years after Missing Link in 2019.
That Wildwood is taking so long isn’t necessarily surprising, given that stop-motion is a notoriously difficult medium to work with and, according to Knight, this project is particularly complicated. It’s based on the first title in a wider children’s fantasy series from The Decemberists frontman and his wife, Carson Ellis, who provided the illustrations, and it hits close to home for the Oregon-based LAIKA as it takes place in and around Portland. The story revolves around a young woman named Prue McKeel who ventures into a mystical forest to save her brother Mac when he’s abducted by a murder of crows sent out by the wicked Alexandra. Together with her classmate Curtis, Prue is drawn into a wider conflict that brings her face-to-face with talking animals, warring factions, and natural beauty that reflects the real-life locale it’s based on.
While LAIKA has been at the forefront of stop-motion animation over the years, the sheer scale of Wildwood will be something unlike what the studio has created in the past, through films like Coraline. One massive battle sequence, in particular, takes their skills to the next level, says Knight. Speaking to Empire Magazine back in 2023, he described the fantastical fight as “the single most difficult thing we’re tackling on this movie.” Even with over a decade of preparation under their belts, creating a frenetic war in a fantasy world through stop-motion that has the same impact as live-action is no easy feat, as he explained:
“We’re starting to chip away and tentatively stepping into, like, ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God, how are we gonna do this?’ But I think it’s going to work. And you’ll tell me when the film’s all done if it did. Stop-motion films tend to look like they’re shot on a table-top, because they are. Moving a physical object a frame at a time and trying to give it life, that’s its own challenge. And then you bring all the kineticism you would have in a live-action action movie… It’s so hard.”
‘Wildwood’ Whisks a Star-Studded Cast Into a Fantasy World
Accompanying the studio’s unique stop-motion flair will be a star-studded cast that will add new life to the characters of the books. At the top of the call sheet is Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. star Peyton Elizabeth Lee as the strong-willed 12-year-old Prue, while The Life of Chuck‘s Jacob Tremblay plays her friend Curtis, and Carey Mulligan, fresh off of The Ballad of Wallis Island, voices their primary foe, Alexandra. They’re just part of the impressive ensemble, which also features Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Jemaine Clement, Amandla Stenberg, Maya Erskine, and Tom Waits, among others.
Wildwood hits theaters in 2026.
via Collider