LAIKA’s ‘Wildwood’ Trailer Is Already One of the Biggest Animated Trailer Launches in History
Few animation studios carry the kind of devoted, almost reverential fan base that LAIKA has built over the past two decades. The Oregon-based stop-motion studio behind beloved films like ‘Coraline,’ ‘ParaNorman,’ and ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ has been away from the big screen since 2019’s ‘Missing Link,’ and the wait for something new has only deepened the hunger. That hunger, it turns out, has been burning far beyond the studio’s existing fanbase.
LAIKA’s latest project, ‘Wildwood,’ is an adaptation of the children’s fantasy novel written by Colin Meloy of The Decemberists and illustrated by his wife Carson Ellis, following two seventh-graders named Prue and Curtis as they enter a magical, impassable wilderness in Portland, Oregon, to rescue Prue’s baby brother. The film has been gestating for years, and anticipation heading into its trailer drop was already sky-high.
When the first trailer finally landed, the reaction was immediate and overwhelming. The teaser has now surpassed 100 million views across platforms, including over 70 million on YouTube alone, making it one of the biggest animated trailer launches of all time. That kind of traction, arriving essentially overnight, signals something well beyond a niche audience reconnecting with a beloved studio.
Directed and produced by LAIKA CEO Travis Knight, the film was written by Chris Butler, the creative mind behind ‘ParaNorman,’ giving the project a deeply familiar pedigree. The trailer notably eschews the familiar tropes of a dramatic voiceover or drum rolls, instead delivering a compilation of stunning imagery set to M83’s “My Tears Are Becoming a Sea,” and the line “from the hands that made Coraline” has been widely read as a pointed statement against AI-generated content.
The ambition behind ‘Wildwood’ has never been a secret. Speaking to Variety, Knight described the project as “a story in the grand tradition of Tolkien, as big as ‘Lord of the Rings’ with a wonderful contemporary quality as well,” adding that “nothing of its kind has been attempted in our medium.” To support that vision, the studio created 136 sets, many large enough for animators to walk through, along with over 230 practical puppets. The General, the giant golden eagle ridden by Prue, alone required 9,000 individually hand-crafted feathers.
The voice cast assembled for the film is equally staggering, featuring Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Jacob Tremblay as the leads, alongside Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Maya Erskine, Richard E. Grant, and Rob Delaney, among others. The film will open in theaters on October 23 via Fathom Entertainment, the specialty distributor that previously backed rereleases of LAIKA hits including ‘Coraline’ and ‘ParaNorman.’
With five consecutive Oscar-nominated films already to its name dating back to ‘Coraline,’ LAIKA enters ‘Wildwood’ with more momentum and expectation than perhaps any other independent animation studio on the planet right now. If the trailer views are any indication, the world is very much ready to return to the impassable wilderness. Are you already convinced this is a must-see, or does ‘Wildwood’ still need to win you over with a full trailer before you commit?
