I’m a sucker for stop-motion animation, and there are few studios putting out more consistently great stop-motion movies than Laika. In 2009, Laika Studios burst onto the scene with Coraline, a dark fantasy film about a girl who discovers an alternate reality inside her home. After that, the studio kept reeling off hits with movies like ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings. It’s now been five years since Laika’s last movie, but the drought is about to end with Wildwood.
On Friday, Laika Studios shared a teaser for Wildwood, a stop-motion movie based on the 2011 children’s fantasy novel of the same name. The story follows seventh graders Prue McKeel and Curtis Mehlberg — two best friends who go on a journey through a magical forest to find Prue’s baby brother Mac, who was kidnapped by a murder of crows.
Peyton Elizabeth Lee (Doogie Kameāloha, M.D.) will voice Prue, while Jacob Tremblay (Room) will voice Curtis. The huge voice cast also features Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, and Richard E. Grant.
Laika Studios CEO Travis Knight, who previously directed Kubo and the Two Strings as well as the Transformers spinoff Bumblebee, helmed Wildwood.
This movie has been years in the making, with Laika announcing plans to adapt the book all the way back in 2011. In a recent interview with Empire Magazine, Knight said that Wildwood is “the hardest thing we have ever done” and explained that Laika Studios had to “build up the creative tools, the technology and our storytelling muscles to do this book justice.”
Wildwood still doesn’t have a release date, but it should finally hit theaters in 2025.
