How ‘Wildwood’ Found Its Voice: Chris Butler, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, and Jacob Tremblay on the Fantasy Epic

We are drawing closer to the debut of LAIKA’s next film, Wildwood — the studio’s first film in over seven years. Earlier this week, we brought you an inside look at how the filmmakers were able to bring its world and characters to life during our visit to LAIKA Studios. However, while creating realistic and emotional puppets is one thing, giving them a voice is another. As such, we got to the bottom of how Wildwood’s characters found their voices during two roundtable discussions with stars Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, and writer Chris Butler.

So many things go into the creation of an iconic LAIKA character. Coraline, Norman, and Kubo all started out as armature skeletons before becoming human (on screen). But before they were ever fabricated, they were simply characters on a page. Their looks were incredibly important, but more than that, who they were, what they stood for, and the relationships they shared had to come first.

A movie like Wildwood needs a writer who not only understands the characters from the source material, but can translate what the characters want, why they want it, and how those motivations shape their journeys onto the screen. In the case of ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, and now Wildwood, that person was Chris Butler.

Butler has been a mainstay at LAIKA since Coraline, but wrote his first screenplay for the studio with the release of ParaNorman in 2012 (one of my personal favorites). He later served as both Head of Story and screenwriter on Kubo and the Two Strings (my actual favorite). And now, he’s taking the lead on Wildwood.

During our visit to LAIKA Studios, we were able to sit down with Butler alongside other members of the press for a wide-ranging Q&A about the process of adapting and writing Wildwood.

”[Imagination is] my lifeblood,” Butler said about writing Wildwood. “I think I told my mom that I wanted to make movies at the age of four, so it’s always been there. In particular, with Wildwood… we think we’ve heard this story before of a child crossing a magical threshold into a fantastical world. But, when I first heard about the project from Travis [Knight], it was like, what’s LAIKA’s version of that? Because we know Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Narnia, and even we’ve done it with Coraline. So what can we do with Wildwood that is embracing these fantasy tropes and playing with that imagination, but doing it in a daring way? Doing it in maybe a more subversive way? And really bringing something to the screen that we haven’t done before.”

Wildwood is a particular challenge to adapt because it’s over five hundred pages long. So for any screenwriter to adapt this into a two and a half hour movie, changes would need to be made. “It was pretty daunting when I first got the book,” he stated. “I spoke to Travis after I finished ParaNorman, and he said I’m really interested in this. I’d never done [an adaptation] before. Everything I’d written up to then was my own stuff. So adapting something that preexisted, I thought, was a great challenge. I also thought it was a great challenge to take something that was so dense, and just try… [to define] what is essential about it that I can bring to a cinematic adaptation that can be two hours long. And I thought that was a really fun process. I am also personally I believe that if you’re going to adapt a book to a movie, make the book. Otherwise why are you doing it? So I was trying to stay true to the book as much as possible. Obviously, I had to tweak a few things. We’ve got this magnificent flight sequence in which I took kernels from the book and then made them more cinematic where possible. But essentially, I was trying to do right by the book. I met with Colin a couple of times. I remember the first time I met with Colin and Carson… And I think he also saw that we were being respectful to the source material. I hope we were.”

He was further asked to elaborate on the streamlining of the novel for the screen and the most important factors he wanted to adapt. “There are a number of considerations. First of all, a big part of it, of course, is me just seeing what moments that I can combine just for time. Books, by their nature, are way more episodic because they give you a chance to breathe in the space. You can explore that world and take your time. You can stop halfway through a chapter, go away, have a sleep, whatever. But you can really take your time and let it seep in. With a movie, once you’ve started, you’re in it, and you get a very small amount of time to get that. So there’s just that natural thing where you’re saying, ‘Well, that scene and that scene are really doing the same thing. Can I put them together?’ For me, the more time that Prue and Curtis spent together, the more you get to enjoy their dynamic. And their emotional arcs through the movie are complementary. They are flip sides of the same coin. Prue thinks she’s got both feet in adulthood, right? She is. She thinks she’s all grown up. Curtis is still quite happily paddling in the kiddie pool. He is obsessed with fantasy. He believes in it. Prue doesn’t believe in anything. Curtis believes in everything. So having them go on this journey where they’re flip sides of that same coin, you get more from that relationship the more time they spend together. So of course I had them spend more time together upfront, so it’s just considerations like that.”

Though Butler has had experience working in several different genres, Wildwood represents a first for him, being the only explicitly high fantasy film he’s ever written for LAIKA. ParaNorman was a send-up of horror B-movies. Kubo was a sweeping period adventure. And Missing Link was a globe-trotting farcical comedy, akin to Around the World in 80 Days. So given the diversity of his screenwriting experience, Butler was asked what it was like to navigate between so many genres that were all very distinct from one another.

”I’m a movie fan,” he proudly declared. “Always have been. So I think once you know what world you’re playing in, you want to do justice to it. For me, I was a massive 80s horror fan. I still am. So I knew exactly what playground I was playing in with ParaNorman. The same for Missing Link. I’m an Indiana Jones and Sherlock Holmes nut. So immediately I knew it was a period adventure. It’s Around the World in 80 Days, meets Laurel and Hardy, meets David Lean. I knew what parameters I was working within. And it’s the same thing with Wildwood. When I read the book, I was like… those classic works of literature about these fantasy worlds. Then also looking at these big ethics. So I think knowing the parameters each time and having some knowledge of film [allows me to] enjoy that challenge. It keeps things fresh as well because… I would hate to write the same thing every time. I do struggle. I think sometimes Wildwood has, like I said, an emotional complexity. I find it very easy to slip in a joke, and sometimes a joke’s not right. So it was about finding that balance. But especially with stuff that you know kids are going to see. And I know Wildwood skews older, but I think it’s for everyone. But when you’re doing stuff like that… When you’re working with dark elements, you can get away with it by puncturing that tension with humor, but you’ve got to find that balance. ParaNorman was way more comedic. Wildwood is not. There is a reality to Wildwood that I don’t think that we’ve achieved before, and so I was being really careful about when to get goofy.”

When asking about his inspirations for the film, Butler stated, “I kept thinking about Lord of the Rings, and I think that was more for scope and scale… This is a big adventure. It’s epic. It genuinely deserves that word. So I think I was trying to think in terms of scope and scale… This is the most emotionally complex movie [I’ve worked on by far]. So I kept thinking about – if this was a live-action movie, what would we do? And I think that’s been the approach in other areas as well, in terms of like the quality of acting of these puppets, I know it’s something that I’ve had talks with people about in the past. Where you know, it’s so often you expect animated characters to be wacky or larger than life, but we were really trying to sell this as real people. So when you see those puppets on screen, you’re compelled by them, you forget that they’re a puppet. That’s the aim, right? … Of course, it’s nice what we do. It’s beautiful that we get to work with these amazing, fabricated puppets. But the aim really is for having what you see on screen be so compelling that you forget that what you’re watching has been manipulated frame by frame. So it was a lot of live-action reference; more than any in typical animation.”

Butler was then asked about what was next after Wildwood. Reports out of Annecy were that he was working on a movie that was a hybrid of Mary Poppins and Dracula. “There are a lot of projects in development just bubbling away. I’m in the middle of writing, but we’re doing some artistic development. Some designs here and there. I tend to do a few of my own designs as well. Anyway, it’s in the pretty early stages, but it’s a solid idea… I think I said at Annecy, I get the chance to play in horror again. But now it’s a different kind of horror… Gothic horror.”

Adapting a dense novel like Wildwood and capturing the essence of Prue and Curtis on paper is challenging. However, it’s essential that everything on the page is delivered by the right performers. This is where Lee and Tremblay come in. We’ve been fans of both, having been lucky enough to interview Lee for Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. and Tremblay for Luca. However, hearing them embody Prue and Curtis makes the casting feel particularly fitting, with Lee bringing Prue’s confidence and fiery determination to life while Tremblay captures Curtis’ wide-eyed enthusiasm.

The duo had begun recording their parts as early as 2021. Lee revealed she had visited LAIKA at the time, but the visit to the studio for the press day was the first time Tremblay had been there. They discussed their familiarity with the books prior to signing on to the film.

”I wasn’t actually familiar with the books before going into this,” stated Tremblay. “But it’s one of those things where you kind of visit it and take a look. My first reading experience was the script, so I feel like the experience for me was a little different.”

”I had a similar experience,” said Lee. “The first sort of introduction I had into the story was the script. We were actually talking to [Butler] yesterday about the book and his process, which was really interesting to hear because it’s just a very different angle into it than we had.”

As LAIKA films tend to take a long time to photograph and stage, the duo addressed having to record lines and perform their roles without any footage, and utilizing only concept art.

”When I went into the booth and started recording, either they hadn’t done anything yet, or they didn’t trust me enough to show it to me,” Lee joked. “But I think they had talked a lot about how they wanted to be inspired by our voices and sort of create the characters and the feeling of the film, in part at least, from the inspiration of how we sounded and the character that came to their minds listening to us speak. So I think a lot of it was done after the recording sessions.”

Tremblay joked, “I saw a little bit of concept art. They trusted me way more. Just some early sketches of my character.”

Because the filmmakers wanted to really capture the true essence of Lee and Tremblay as references for Prue and Curtis, the process of performing in the booth was critical for Knight and the rest of the team.

”When we were in the booth, they filmed us the whole time recording,” Lee started. “And so it is funny watching the film because I feel like you can see certain facial expressions or hand gestures that feel very reminiscent of things that we do. So I think they did pull inspiration from our faces and gestures. And I also just think that idea of the picture our voices painted for them. But in terms of our actual involvement, at least maybe Jacob was highly involved in the process of designing his character? But I was not.”

Tremblay added, “I saw there were sketches in the book, and this film does replicate that a little bit. But that’s all I really got — that one little sketch. Recently, we’ve been here at the studio and we actually got to see the puppets in person and get a close look at them. It’s just been really cool.”

While Lee and Tremblay have had extensive experience working for Disney and other major studios, this was the first time for both of them working for LAIKA. Despite that, however, they were longtime fans and had wanted to work for the studio long before joining Wildwood.

”I was absolutely a fan,” stated Lee. “I grew up on these films, but it was really cool getting to be a part of the process, because while I had loved the films purely as a viewer, I had no idea what went into them. And the years and years of dedication that these people put into these films is just so inspiring. So while I had known the company’s work, I didn’t have any idea about the intricacies of their process. So this has been super eye-opening and inspiring in so many ways for me.”

”I definitely grew up watching their films,” said Tremblay. “Coraline was a huge part of my childhood. I would just watch that movie on replay. But yeah, you don’t realize the hard work and the scale of the sets that go into these projects until you really see them in person. They have these huge sets that they’ve built that are literally only in the film for like an establishing shot. Just the amount of effort that’s put into that is just insane. But honestly, it really pays off.”

As first-time voice actors for LAIKA, but experienced voice-over actors for other studios, Lee and Tremblay were both asked to compare the experience of working with LAIKA versus other studios.

”Patience for sure. I recorded my bit way back in 2021, and it’s been so long. It was really interesting because you know when I watched Luca or Orion and the Dark, for example, it was really easy to recognize that as my voice. Just because so much time had gone by when I saw the screener of Wildwood for the first time, I didn’t really recognize my voice. Which was great because I was able to actually disassociate from the character and just indulge in the story. And I feel like for me it’s always kind of hard to listen to your own voice. I feel like everyone can kind of relate to that a little bit. So that kind of helped with it a bit.”

Lee chimed in, “The handmade aspect of LAIKA’s films is something that I’ve never experienced before. We were joking about the trailer, and how in the trailer it says, ‘From the hands that brought you Coraline.’ It’s a fun catchy phrase, but it really is true. These films were crafted for audiences by the hands of artists. And I think especially right now in the world, the idea of human art that is completely made by people is so exciting and important. And I think that having any contribution to keeping that alive is very exciting and is a huge honor for me.”

She felt a strong connection with Prue. When asked about that connection she stated, “Prue’s character is very special to me because I think her journey in terms of starting as this very self-assured, confident, mature young woman, and then having her whole world view fall apart. Throughout the film, she sort of has to find this new version of truth and this new reality. This new north star in her life. I think that was very relatable for me. I think that that’s something that a lot of people experience growing up. When you’re little, you think being grown up means you know all the answers and you know what’s right and wrong, and bad or good. And then you realize you’re still a child, and there really is no clear right and wrong, and good and bad in the real world. And I think her journey of discovering that and allowing herself eventually to be open to that and sort of grow as a person, I think, is something that takes a lot of bravery, and something that I personally was inspired by in her journey to incorporate more of that in my own life; to being open to new things and open to new possibilities, and finding kind of magic in everything.”

Tremblay also discussed Curtis. “I absolutely love how adorable Curtis is. Some of the artists that work on the face have nicknamed him Cupcake because of how adorable he is. And I couldn’t agree more. I think something that I personally relate to, especially when I was younger, closer to Curtis’s age, is I love how inspired he is by like fiction. And these fantasy stories in his life, and how they inspire him to be brave and push forward in this crazy world that they’ve just been like thrown into. I feel like that’s something that me and a lot of other kids probably most kids could relate to, and I think that’s a story that could turn into one itself that inspires people.”

Having had the chance to see firsthand the miracles LAIKA’s filmmakers accomplish on a day-to-day basis, I’ve come away inspired by the creativity and ingenuity behind every frame. At LAIKA, the filmmakers and crews aren’t simply building puppets; they’re building characters — characters with a humanity that can rival anything found in live action. And from Butler’s words on the page, to Lee and Tremblay’s performances in the booth, to the animators painstakingly bringing those performances to life one frame at a time, Prue and Curtis represent every stage of that remarkable process.

Stay tuned for more coverage on Wildwood coming soon to The Nerds of Color! We are going to sit down with the heads of the studio’s respective departments to find out even more about how Wildwood was brought to life!

Wildwood hits theaters October 23!