Somewhere in a warehouse in Portland, Oregon, a team of extremely patient artists just spent six years moving tiny puppets one twelfth of an inch at a time so that the internet could lose its mind over the Wildwood Final Trailer in the span of about ninety seconds. That is, frankly, a wildly unfair trade of labor, but here we are, and it’s glorious.
LAIKA — the studio that gave us Coraline, ParaNorman, and a talking dog with an axe in Kubo and the Two Strings — has dropped the Wildwood Final Trailer, and the internet’s collective reaction can best be summarized as “well, I guess I’m crying about a crow kidnapping now.” Laika calls Wildwood its sixth stop-motion feature, and the studio has been on something of a hiatus since 2019’s The Missing Link. That’s a long time to wait for a movie about a girl fighting birds, and the wait is officially over.
So What Actually Happens in This Thing?
If you somehow haven’t watched the Wildwood Final Trailer yet (go do that, I’ll wait), here’s the pitch. The story follows headstrong teenager Prue McKeel, played by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, who after her baby brother is abducted by a murder of crows launches a desperate rescue mission into the Impassable Wilderness, an enchanted forest hidden just beyond Portland, Oregon.
Yes, “a murder of crows” is doing a lot of narrative heavy lifting here — it’s both the correct collective noun for crows and an ominous vibe, and someone at LAIKA absolutely knew that when they wrote it down.
According to Dark Horizons, Prue is joined by her best friend Curtis as she enters a hidden forest cultivated by original settlers, and the woods themselves seem determined to keep outsiders away from whatever secrets are hiding inside — including her baby brother Mac, who’s been taken by the crows and a mysterious woman named Alexandra.
That mysterious woman is played by Carey Mulligan, and per Slash Film’s breakdown, Alexandra is a grief-stricken mother who lost her own son and is doing something fairly horrific to cope with the pain. So this is less “cute forest adventure” and more “prestige-drama sadness wrapped in a stop-motion fantasy quest,” which is exactly the kind of tonal whiplash LAIKA specializes in.
They made a horror movie about buttons for eyes and called it a kids’ film once; nobody should be surprised that the Wildwood Final Trailer hits like a gut-punch disguised as a bedtime story.
The Cast Is, Frankly, Ridiculous
Every time a new Wildwood Final Trailer or teaser drops, someone inevitably has to stop and recite the voice cast like a magic incantation, because it just keeps going. We’re talking Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali (as Brenden, the Bandit King of Wildwood — a title I would also like, please), Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Tom Waits, and Richard E. Grant.
That is a cast you’d expect for an Oscar-bait courtroom drama, not a movie about a teenager punching her way through a talking-animal bureaucracy. LAIKA clearly used its “we have five Oscar nominations in a row” leverage wisely.
Wait, This Has Been “In the Works” Since When?
Here’s where the Wildwood Final Trailer gets a little bittersweet. Per Gold Derby’s reporting, the film is based on the fantasy novel by Colin Meloy, frontman of The Decemberists, and has been in development for more than a decade.
Director Travis Knight told the crowd at Telluride that some of the footage in the trailer was shot almost six years ago, calling the whole experience a “time warp” as the team finally nears the end of the journey. So somewhere in this two-and-a-half-minute trailer are shots that predate several presidential administrations, multiple iPhone generations, and at least one full news cycle about whether stop-motion is “back.”
The book itself, for context, came out in 2011 and spawned two sequels — Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium — and LAIKA has apparently been sitting on the film rights that whole time, quietly building tiny forests in a warehouse like a very patient, very expensive hobby.
The Soundtrack Choice Is Doing Emotional Terrorism
Multiple outlets flagged that the Wildwood Final Trailer is set to the song “The Woods” by indie artist San Fermin, and according to Gold Derby, cast and crew have compared the film’s climactic battle sequence to a stop-motion take on The Lord of the Rings.
Let that sink in: a studio famous for painstakingly moving felt puppets frame by frame is apparently attempting Helm’s Deep, but with birds. If the Wildwood Final Trailer is any indication, the scale on display goes well beyond “cozy forest adventure” — this is full-blown epic fantasy, just built one tiny handcrafted set piece at a time.
The Internet Reception: Somewhere Between “Sobbing” and “Sold”
The reaction across outlets has been overwhelmingly, almost suspiciously positive. Gizmodo called the visuals stunning enough that it barely makes sense they were achieved in stop-motion at all, and noted the Wildwood Final Trailer finally shows the emotional stakes advancing alongside the eye candy. FirstShowing.net went so far as to say this is the most emotional intro the marketing campaign has produced yet, after multiple featurettes and behind-the-scenes looks. Meanwhile Nerdist admitted upfront that a great trailer doesn’t guarantee a great movie, but still couldn’t help gushing over how moving and gorgeous this particular one is.
And it’s not just critics — the earlier trailers set the internet on fire too. Dark Horizons reported that the very first teaser surpassed 100 million views across platforms, with over 70 million of those on YouTube alone, which is an absurd number for an animated fantasy trailer with no existing cinematic universe behind it. If the Wildwood Final Trailer performs anywhere close to that, LAIKA’s marketing team deserves hazard pay and a nap.
The Rollout: Festivals, Formats, and a Very Specific Date
Here’s the logistics dump, because apparently this movie is getting the full red-carpet treatment. Per Deadline, Wildwood opens exclusively in theaters on October 23, and will open AFI Fest on October 21, with tickets already on sale via Fathom Entertainment in the US and FilmNation Entertainment handling international sales.
It’s also getting the premium-format treatment: the film will be presented in select 4DX, DBOX, and Dolby Cinema screenings where available. So yes, you may soon be able to physically feel a stop-motion crow abduction in your theater seat, which is a sentence I did not expect to write today.
Across the pond, Get Your Comic On confirmed that Black Bear UK unveiled the trailer for UK audiences, with the film set for UK cinemas on October 23, and a world premiere at the 70th BFI London Film Festival on October 11. Meanwhile up north, The Joy of Movies noted the Canadian release is being handled by VVS Films, with the writer openly hoping for a TIFF premiere before the wide release. Basically: no matter which continent you’re on, somebody local has already claimed a piece of the Wildwood Final Trailer hype cycle.
Theories, Vibes, and Wild Speculation
Now for the fun part — the stuff nobody can technically confirm yet. Between the various trailers and featurettes, a few fan theories have started circulating:
- Alexandra isn’t a villain, she’s a warning. Given her framing as a mother whose grief curdled into something dangerous, several commentators (see Slash Film’s comparison above) are betting the film uses her as a dark mirror for Prue — what happens when love for a sibling or child isn’t tempered by anything else.
- The Council Tree is basically Wildwood’s Ent. LAIKA’s own official site describes it as an ancient living landmark at the center of the Wilderness, which has fantasy nerds convinced it’ll be central to the third-act stakes, Tolkien-style.
- Pittock Mansion cameo alert. The studio has teased that Pittock Mansion, one of Portland’s most iconic real-world landmarks, has been reimagined from the ground up for the film — a nice bit of hometown pride baked into the fantasy geography.
- The Avian Principality is shaping up as a full political faction, not just “the bad crows.” LAIKA’s marketing describes an entire Avian Principality that rules the skies above the wilderness, suggesting the crow kidnapping isn’t random malice but part of a larger power struggle.
None of this is confirmed, obviously — it’s speculation built on trailer crumbs, the way it always is before a big fantasy release. But if the Wildwood Final Trailer is holding this much back while still making people cry, October 23 is shaping up to be a big day for anyone who ever wanted to see felt puppets reenact a battle sequence with Lord of the Rings-level ambition.
The Bottom Line
Ten-plus years, five prior Oscar nominations, a cast stacked deep enough to anchor three different awards contenders, and a trailer that’s apparently making grown film critics emotional over a fictional crow kidnapping. The Wildwood Final Trailer has done its job: it’s sold the scale, sold the heartbreak, and sold the idea that LAIKA’s long hibernation was worth the wait.
Whether the finished film sticks the landing the way Missing Link didn’t quite manage remains to be seen — but based on the reaction so far, a whole lot of people are already fully invested in getting that baby brother back from the birds.
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