Laika's newest stop-motion film, Wildwood, reaches theaters after a development period that stretched roughly 16 years, and the studio says the movie could not have been made without two decades of accumulated technical know-how. The film follows a young girl named Prue who enters the impassable wilderness surrounding Portland to find her baby brother, and it opens as the biggest production in the studio's history.
Laika CEO Travis Knight optioned the rights to Colin Meloy's book of the same name in 2011, but production did not start until a decade later. Knight, who directed the film, said he stayed with the project because of what it meant to him personally, describing the story as one about love, loss and grief and about the impossible things love asks of people. The film required nearly 50 animators and more than 200 puppets.
Head of animation Brad Schiff said Laika's approach combines old-school craft with modern technology, and that the studio develops new techniques on each project and pushes them further on the next. On the earlier film Missing Link, the main character was fitted with a diaphragm that expanded or contracted when an animator turned a screw on the puppet's back, creating the appearance of breathing, and the technique has since become standard for Laika puppets.
Costume designer Deb Cook said the sheer number of available tools mattered more on Wildwood than any single innovation, since the film's city sequences use modern clothing while forest characters have fantastical looks. The team used more flexible fabrics and engineered a new process for silicone that is lighter and more durable than before. Oliver Jones, head of characters and practical effects, said the goal is to move away from foam latex, which smells, shrinks over time and crumbles after about five years.
The scale of the production also pushed the studio toward better organization, including a sophisticated tracking system for puppets across its many stages. Knight called the film's epic battle scene probably the most technically challenging work the studio has done, while saying he is most proud of quiet, intimate scenes in which the performances of puppets with no life of their own come alive through the artistry of the people behind them.
Laika has operated for just over 20 years, and Knight said the version of Wildwood arriving in 2026 depended on lessons from films including ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings. He said it was gratifying to make the film with a mix of Laika veterans and newcomers, including cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and young animators for whom Wildwood is a first feature; some were inspired to enter the field by Coraline, Laika's first film.
More technology news from TechManNews.
