Somewhere in Hillsboro, Oregon, a room full of extremely patient puppet-wranglers is finally allowed to exhale. After roughly seven years of stop-motion silence since Missing Link, LAIKA has dropped the full Wildwood trailer on its YouTube channel, and the internet’s animation nerds (a demographic that includes this writer, unapologetically) have collectively lost their minds. If you have somehow not yet watched the Wildwood trailer, close this tab, go watch it, and come back — I’ll wait. The rest of you, welcome. Let’s dig in.
Wait, What Is Wildwood, and Why Should You Care?
For the uninitiated: Wildwood is director Travis Knight’s passion project, adapted from the 2011 novel by Colin Meloy — yes, the frontman of Portland’s own indie-folk institution The Decemberists — and illustrated by Carson Ellis. According to the story follows Prue McKeel, a headstrong teenager whose baby brother is abducted by a murder of crows and carried into the Impassable Wilderness, a hidden forest outside Portland, Oregon (Cartoon Brew).
Naturally, Prue does not respond to this by calling animal control. She responds by grabbing her hapless classmate Curtis and marching directly into the enchanted, possibly murderous woods, because that is what protagonists do.
The Wildwood trailer wastes zero time establishing stakes. As MovieWeb notes, the footage opens with Prue’s family and her infant brother Mac, with her parents sternly warning her not to leave the house (MovieWeb) — a warning that lasts approximately as long as movie-parent warnings always do. Cue bicycle, cue wagon, cue baby, cue crows, cue chaos.
The Wildwood Trailer’s Cast of Talking Animals, Bandits, and Grief-Driven Warlords
What actually happens once Prue crosses into Wildwood proper? Per Cartoon Brew’s breakdown of the full trailer, Prue enters a sprawling world populated by talking animals, bandits, ancient powers, and rival factions fighting over the forest’s future, with her rescue mission expanding into a larger journey involving Wildwood’s history and her own connection to it (Cartoon Brew).
MovieWeb adds that Prue navigates a world of talking animals, bandits, and powerful figures driven by grief and ambition, as the pair is drawn into a conflict threatening the balance of the forest itself (MovieWeb).
Translation: this is less “cute forest critters” and more “Shakespearean court politics, but everyone’s got fur and at least one of them may be plotting a coup.” Exactly the kind of tonal tightrope LAIKA has built a career on.
And the voice cast the Wildwood trailer is flexing? It is, frankly, absurd in the best way. The ensemble includes Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Jacob Tremblay as Prue and Curtis, alongside Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Tom Waits, and Richard E. Grant (Cartoon Brew). That’s not a cast list, that’s a small nation’s cabinet. Somewhere a casting director deserves a raise, a nap, and possibly a restraining order for how many A-listers they cornered.
The Scale Behind the Wildwood Trailer Is Genuinely Unhinged (Complimentary)
Here’s where the Wildwood trailer stops being just a trailer and starts being a small miracle of human patience. Earlier reporting cited by MovieWeb pegged the production at 136 handcrafted sets and 231 practical puppets, the most ever built for a LAIKA production (MovieWeb), and World of Reel separately describes “Wildwood” as Travis Knight’s 140-minute animated epic, LAIKA’s follow-up to Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Missing Link, and Kubo and the Two Strings (World of Reel).
For context: 231 puppets is more characters than most live-action ensembles manage, except none of these actors can complain about the craft services table because they are made of silicone and ball-and-socket armatures. The Wildwood trailer’s painterly Pacific Northwest look — all mossy canopies and impossible architecture — reportedly comes from a studio treating stop-motion less like a gimmick and more like a personal dare.
So What Are People Actually Saying About the Wildwood Trailer?
The trade press reaction has been near-unanimous in its enthusiasm, which is rare enough in this business to be its own headline. SlashFilm didn’t mince words, calling the movie the animated movie to beat in 2026 and urging readers to see it in a theater if at all possible (SlashFilm).
The Playlist framed the Wildwood trailer as the moment LAIKA is finally returning to theaters seven years after Missing Link (The Playlist). Variety, meanwhile, has been tracking the release strategy closely, reporting that Fathom Entertainment will handle the wide U.S. theatrical release while FilmNation Entertainment represents the film internationally (Variety) — a distribution setup that suggests LAIKA is treating this less like a niche passion project and more like a genuine theatrical event.
The Speculative Part: Is Wildwood LAIKA’s Comeback Movie?
Now for the fun, unverifiable-but-irresistible part. LAIKA has spent the last two years quietly running one of the weirder box office experiments in modern animation: re-releasing Coraline in remastered 3D and watching it print money nobody expected, eventually crossing $50 million globally and becoming, per Business Wire’s own release copy, the studio’s proof that sustained fan demand exists to experience LAIKA on the big screen (Business Wire).
Film writer Scott Mendelson has openly floated the theory that this signals a potential generational-nostalgia comeback for LAIKA as a brand among audiences who grew up on ParaNorman and Kubo (Scott Mendelson’s Substack).
If that theory holds, the Wildwood trailer isn’t just marketing — it’s the test of whether goodwill actually converts into opening-weekend ticket sales, which is a much scarier gamble than anything involving crows.
Travis Knight himself seems to be leaning into the “make it or break it” framing rather than shying from it. In the studio’s own statement, he described the film as the biggest world LAIKA has ever built, and the most personal, a celebration of artistry over algorithms and a belief that films made by hand can still feel bold, surprising, dangerous, and alive (Business Wire).
That’s not marketing-department boilerplate, that’s a man staking his studio’s future on a movie about a girl, her baby brother, and several hundred puppets that took years to build. Respect.
The Verdict (For Now)
Nobody has seen the finished film yet, so consider all box office chatter above exactly as sturdy as it sounds: speculative, vibes-based, and subject to change the moment actual reviews land. What we do know is that the Wildwood trailer has done its job spectacularly — it’s gorgeous, it’s a little unsettling in the way the best LAIKA trailers always are, and it has already generated more breathless trade coverage than most fully released movies manage.
Whether Wildwood becomes LAIKA’s Coraline-sized cultural moment or a beloved cult favorite that finds its audience slowly, one thing is certain: on October 23, a whole lot of very patient animators are going to watch a whole lot of strangers finally see what they built, frame by agonizing frame. Somebody get these people a fruit basket.
Wildwood opens nationwide in U.S. theaters on October 23, 2026, via Fathom Entertainment, with FilmNation Entertainment handling international release.
Keep coming back to ScreenTrak for the latest in the world of entertainment!
Sources
- Cartoon Brew — “Laika Unveils First Full Trailer For Travis Knight’s ‘Wildwood'”
- Cartoon Brew — “Laika Drops Breathtaking First Teaser Trailer For ‘Wildwood'”
- Variety — “Laika Unveils Teaser Trailer for Travis Knight’s Handcrafted Fantasy ‘Wildwood'”
- SlashFilm — “Wildwood Trailer: Laika’s Stunning Stop-Motion Adventure Could Be One Of 2026’s Best Films”
- MovieWeb — “‘Wildwood’ Promises Spellbinding Adventure in First Teaser Trailer”
- World of Reel — “‘Wildwood’ Trailer Reveals Travis Knight’s 140-Minute Animated Epic”
- The Playlist — “‘Wildwood’ Trailer: LAIKA’s Handcrafted Epic Fantasy Ventures Into An Enchanted Forest”
- Business Wire — “LAIKA Partners With Fathom Entertainment for Domestic Distribution and FilmNation Entertainment for International Sales on Wildwood”
- Scott Mendelson’s Substack — “Why Boffo ‘Coraline’ Box Office Suggests A Potential Cultural Comeback for Laika”
