Wildwood (2025)

[BluBonnet]

Wildwood Is The ‘Hardest’ Film Laika Studios Has Ever Made: ‘It’s Incredibly Ambitious’

It’s obvious in every frame to hit the screen that each Laika movie is a labour of love. The studio is dedicated to the painstaking craft of stop-motion animation, resulting in the likes of Coraline, Kubo And The Two Strings, and most recently Missing Link. But even by Laika standards, their next film is a feat of mind-boggling complexity – a decade-in-the-making fantasy epic that’s set to push the studio’s capabilities to a whole new level. Get ready for Wildwood, transforming Laika’s home of Portland, Oregon, into animated form – and sending young hero Prue on a dangerous journey into a fantastical forest realm.

As director Travis Knight tells Empire in an exclusive new interview, the film, based on Colin Meloy’s acclaimed novel, is “the hardest thing we have ever done” – hence its especially lengthy development. “A huge part of the reason it’s taken us so long to bring this to life cinematically is that it’s incredibly ambitious,” Knight explains. “There’s all these elements that are really challenging to do in stop-motion.” Those elements include epic battles, aerial sequences, and characters such as Prue’s “mentor figure” the General – the majestic eagle seen in the exclusive new image above. “She’s a miracle of craftsmanship and engineering,” says Knight of the character, precision-tooled to mimic the fluid movement of real-life birds.

Just as Coraline was a coming-of-age story, Wildwood will explore the 13-year-old Prue’s development as she ventures on a quest with geeky classmate Curtis, together searching for Prue’s baby brother who’s been spirited away by a murder of crows. “Prue’s one of those great young-adult protagonists we meet on the bittersweet precipice of crossing the Rubicon from childhood to adulthood,” Knight teases. And in terms of visuals, 15 years after Coraline, the studio has come on leaps and bounds. “We’ve had to build up the creative tools, the technology and our storytelling muscles to do this book justice,” explains Knight. “What I love about this team is how they’re always swimming forward, never content to rest on what’s come before.” Get ready to venture forth into the mysteries of Wildwood.

Wildwood is set for release in 2025.

[BluBonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prv_FLWLlq8

[Dragon78]

I was wondering if they were doing anymore animated films, especially how bad the last one did.

[scoogs]

Another one from a couple of weeks ago:
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/...ood-exclusive/


I wonder if this will only cover the first book or condense the full trilogy.

[Monterey Jack]

Please don't go to streaming...

[Chedwiggen]

I love Laika.

[Dragon78]

I love Laika as well though to this day I think Coraline and ParaNorman are still their best stuff.

[Bubbles-11]

Fathom Events will be distributing in the US on behalf of Laika, will be releasing in US theaters April 2025
https://www.thewrap.com/coraline-rer...plained-laika/

[DanTheMan]

Been waiting on this one for a while now. Quite excited to get another Laika up on the big screen again.

[scoogs]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1NELqVsCXQ

[UHDLoverForever]

Originally Posted by Dragon78

I was wondering if they were doing anymore animated films, especially how bad the last one did.

Wasn't the insane budget a major reason why their last film hurt them so badly? They did stop-motion on 1s the whole film if I remember correctly, that's both admirable and insane!

[Monterey Jack]

Theaters, yes...!!!

[Bubbles-11]

Originally Posted by Bubbles-11

Fathom Events will be distributing in the US on behalf of Laika, will be releasing in US theaters April 2025
https://www.thewrap.com/coraline-rer...plained-laika/

Article has now been updated to say Late 2025

[BluBonnet]

Delayed to 2026

[BluBonnet]

First look at Prue

[Bubbles-11]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

First look at Prue

Where is this from?

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by Bubbles-11

Where is this from?

Photos from Annecy

[BluBonnet]

[Bubbles-11]

LAIKA’s Second Act: How the Stop-Motion Animation House Is Reintroducing Itself to Fans

It’s been six years since the release of “Missing Link,” the fifth stop-motion animated film from the Portland-based animation house Laika. If you don’t remember it, that’s because the $100 million film — though well reviewed with an 88 percent Rotten Tomatoes score — was a financial bomb, bringing in only $26.5 million globally. Prior Laika films were all budgeted in the $60 million range and were almost all consistent performers at the box office with around $100 million globally, but reports at the time estimated “Missing Link” could have lost over $100 million after expenses.

The onset of COVID-19 in early 2020 didn’t help Laika bounce back. The pandemic severely hampered the company’s ability to work by hand in their tactile animation facility in the Oregon woodlands, such that production on the company’s next ambitious stop-motion epic, “Wildwood,” did not formally begin until September 2021. The company’s founder, Travis Knight, in the meantime has been occupied with the upcoming live-action “Masters of the Universe” tentpole film for Amazon MGM.

But Laika hasn’t been sitting idly in the six years that have passed. After the failure of “Missing Link,” the studio has taken its time to, just as they do with each of their films, rebuild piece by piece. They’re now aiming to let a new audience know who they are, all over again.

“It hasn’t been a quiet phase for us,” David Burke, Laika’s CMO, told IndieWire. “It’s really been more a quiet build. It’s not us being dormant. We’ve been using that time to reflect on who Laika is and what the audience needs from us now, and also recognizing that the industry is shifting. We’re not just adapting. We’re reasserting what makes Laika singular.”

“Wildwood” is as good of a re-introduction as any. The fantasy film is based on the first in a trilogy of YA novels by Colin Meloy, better known as the lead singer and songwriter for the Portland-based indie rock band The Decemberists. But the project is also right at home for Laika, as it’s set in a secret forest just outside of Laika’s home in Portland and follows a girl whose baby brother is taken into the forest, only to discover an exotic world of talking animals and bandits. It sounds like she might’ve stumbled on Laika’s studio facility.

“We’ve always been about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in stop-motion animation, and now we’re taking that mindset and applying it to filmmaking in general,” Burke said. “I think what the world will see is that when ‘Wildwood’ is released and there’s more visibility around our broader creative strategy, there’s going to be a greater understanding around the expressions of that.”

But the lengthy layover has meant Laika has to get more aggressive in positioning “Wildwood” to audiences, even before the company has secured a distributor to release it (Burke said the company is in active discussions with several potential distributors for the film). Theatrical would seem to be the priority since four of their five of their films were released via Focus Features, while “Missing Link” was one of the last wide releases from Annapurna Pictures and United Artists Releasing.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/busin...od-1235134300/

[Bubbles-11]

Laika Plots Re-Releases, New Merch and Partnerships for 20th Anniversary | Exclusive

The Portland, Oregon-based LAIKA has, in its first 20 years, become as identifiable an animation brand as Studio Ghibli or Pixar.

The studio is known for their handcrafted stop-motion-animated tales that flirt with the macabre and, while being (so far at least) for all audiences, never forgo their edge. And, in celebrating their 20th anniversary leading up to the release of their latest feature “Wildwood” next year, the company is pulling out all the stops, with a lineup of new product releases, partnerships, exhibitions and publishing initiatives. This includes everything from a redesign of the official site (by creative agency Monks) to new merchandise coming to the official shop to a series of videos from Devon Rodriguez (you can see an exclusive video below) to a Rizzoli coffee table book called “LAIKA: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory.” For the next year, everything is truly coming up LAIKA.

TheWrap spoke to LAIKA’s chief marketing and operations officer David Burke, who we had just seen at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where the studio celebrated its past while teasing “Wildwood,” which the studio is officially describing as “its most ambitious film yet” (and it certainly looks that way) and the live-action and animated projects to come in the years ahead, including an adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s “Piranesi,” written by Luca Guadagnino’s frequent collaborator David Kajganich and directed by LAIKA CEO (and lead animator) Travis Knight.

“The takeaway for us was that we should be leaning into what makes LAIKA unique and continue to focus on telling stories that have that emotional depth and artistic ambition,” Burke said of his experience at Annecy. “And I have to say, from a professional standpoint, I left more confident than ever with what we’re building across both animation and live-action. It does feel like everything’s arriving at exactly the right cultural moment.”

He said that, traditionally, LAIKA has been very closed off, so to mention stories that are in the embryonic stages of development was very new and scary. “Over the last several years we’ve worked tirelessly to establish a development team and a slate of truly original projects. Each of those projects will be [officially] announced in due course, and you want to give it the space and the attention that it deserves,” Burke said. But the slate does point to, as he said, “a bigger ambition.” “We want to produce multiple films at once and across multiple mediums – it’s not just stop motion, but it’s potentially CG and live-action. And we want to build out a pool of talent that are continuing to push projects forward constantly.”

Burke points to projects like “The Night Gardener,” an adult animated feature from “The Account” and “Ozark” creator Bill Dubuque and Knight, and the upcoming, untitled feature directed by Pete Copeland and written by John August about a high schooler who is in search of her missing mother. (Burke described the Copeland film as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” crossed with “Moulin Rouge” set in the Louisiana bayou.) Burke also said that Victor Maldonado and Alfredo Torres, known collectively as Headless, are working on an epic that he described as blending fantasy and brutal realism set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. There are also features in the works from LAIKA regulars Sam Fell and Chris Butler (whose upcoming project is described as Mary Poppins meets Dracula – more on that in a minute), along with new LAIKA recruits Chris and Justin Copeland aka the Copeland Brothers. “They’re all actively developing projects. There’s a lot going on,” Burke said.

But before all of that, the 20th celebration must begin – with a theatrical re-release of “ParaNorman,” which was the studio’s second feature, following Henry Selick’s “Coraline.” It was last year’s re-release of “Coraline,” which earned a staggering $52.4 million worldwide, that made them particularly bullish about a re-release of “ParaNorman.” Like “Coraline,” “ParaNorman” will return to theaters in the Halloween corridor, in a new 3D remaster, and with goodies abundant – a new look at “Wildwood” along with a new computer-animated short film called “The Thrifting” that will see Anna Kendrick reprise her role from the film.

And, like everything else that is a part of the 20th celebration, it’s about “leveraging these opportunities to pave the road to ‘Wildwood.’” Burke said that the studio wants to make sure that audiences are reconnecting with LAIKA – with the visual language and the understanding of what makes the studio different. (They’ll be using extensive behind-the-scenes footage, too, to get that story of how the films are made across.)

https://www.thewrap.com/laika-20th-a...rman-wildwood/