Why Laika’s ‘Wildwood’ Needs to Be On Your Most Anticipated Films List

The art of handcrafted storytelling is getting lost. With challenges like generative AI rapidly growing in prominence in film over the past several years, you’d be hard-pressed to find many studios willing to invest in the medium of long-form stop-motion animation. And yet, Laika Studios lives on. With their latest release Wildwood, coming this October, the Travis Knight-led studio is absolutely pushing back on AI culture with beauty, artistry, and pure human innovation and craftsmanship.

Consumerism and capitalism have given way to companies and studios looking to cut costs through massive layoffs of essential human workers in favor of “innovating” with AI tools. In essence the dawn of OpenAI and Claude has unfortunately opened the floodgates to corporate culture deeming humans to be obsolete. While that may seem like an oversimplification, with billionaires believing they can create The Odyssey using Gen AI, art forms that once defined generations in filmmaking and storytelling are in danger of being lost, along with the artists with the skills to execute them. This is why, more than ever, it’s important audiences support them.

Laika Studios is fighting tooth and nail for both change and preservation in the industry. Their films serve as testaments to not only how mature storytelling can and does exist in the animated medium, but also that there are some who still believe in the preservation of endangered art forms. Today, the studio dropped its latest trailer for Wildwood, their most ambitious project to date. Check it out here:

While many in entertainment still unfairly write off animation as a “kid’s medium,” Wildwood and the rest of the Laika library have repeatedly proven time and time again that this sentiment is antiquated and narrow-minded. Animation — and in Laika’s case, stop-motion animation — is simply a form that enables filmmakers and storytellers to do the impossible with the same level of heart and honesty that any cinematic medium is capable of. Using this medium to tell complex stories about the multifaceted aspects of love and death, or the ramifications of bullying that can still appeal to broader age ranges is no small task. However, the studio has never shied away from the challenge.

Additionally, they’re not looking at advancements in AI to take shortcuts or cut costs in the work they put into crafting every film. They depend on their internal teams to innovate, construct, and create efficiencies while still retaining the same quality and charm of handcrafted artistry they devote themselves to film after film. Knight even put together a piece truly emphasizing the studio’s commitment to this recently:

Wildwood is Laika’s first film in over seven years, and while I’m happy they are continuing to fight the good fight to keep stop-motion alive, it’s been really difficult watching some of their masterpieces struggle initially at the box office. While Coraline continues to make money off incredible merchandise and successful re-releases, films like ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings absolutely deserved to do much better against their respective budgets. It’s only now, during its 10th anniversary, that audiences have begun to come around to Kubo (my personal favorite).

With Wildwood being arguably the studio’s most epic film to date, it represents an “all the marbles” situation for the Portland-based company. Based solely on the trailer, the scope of the battle scenes depicted in the back half of the preview alone is bigger than anything we’ve seen in their previous productions. It’s also a departure from a genre perspective, shifting things from more intimate horror stories to high fantasy. That makes the film incredibly unique with an ambition we’ve never seen before for any stop-motion animated film. The studio, in essence, is giving audiences something they’ve never seen before, not because they think it’ll make millions (though I’m sure they hope it does, and so do I), but because they are dedicated to the craft and they love the game. In short, they are preserving the medium of stop-motion by pushing the limits of what you can do with it in Wildwood, and that’s nothing short of incredible.

It’s for these reasons that Wildwood deserves the same level of support films like The Odyssey, Dune, and Avengers: Doomsday are getting. Don’t get me wrong. We’re just as excited for “Dunesday” as anyone else. And there are other really exciting films coming out later this year too, that we’ll for sure be covering, including Forgotten Island, Clayface, and Godzilla Minus Zero. However, I’d challenge anyone out there to find any other movie this year quite like Wildwood — one that challenges conventions for any film, from both a technical and thematic level. At a time when so much of the entertainment industry is asking how technology can make filmmaking faster, cheaper, and easier, Laika is asking something very different: How can real-life human filmmakers and artists push their craft to ensure true craftsmanship is preserved? And that level of passion deserves to be seen.

Wildwood hits theaters October 23. Keep an eye on The Nerds of Color for more coverage coming soon!