The 16-year journey behind Laika’s epic stop-motion movie Wildwood

LAIKA’s Wildwood took 16 years from concept to screen (2011–2026) because it was LAIKA’s most ambitious project to date, requiring technical innovations that simply did not exist when director Travis Knight first optioned the book. LAIKA optioned Colin Meloy’s 500-page fantasy novel Wildwood in September 2011, right after the book’s release. However, director Travis Knight realised early on that stop-motion technology at the time wasn't advanced enough to pull off the story's massive scope.

Before Wildwood could enter active production, LAIKA had to spend a decade building the toolkit — refining 3D printing, rigging, hybrid digital-practical FX and massive puppet mechanics across their previous projects (ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link). Unlike traditional stop-motion films that take place in contained environments, Wildwood features 130+ distinct locations set across a fictionalized, sprawling version of Portland's Forest Park. Hundreds of complex puppets, including massive animal armies (coyotes, birds, rodents) and magical forest creatures, each required intricate armatures.

To capture the emotional nuance of the story's PG-13 rating and intense themes, LAIKA pushed their signature rapid-prototype 3D-printing tech to unprecedented limits. Animators printed up to 24 individual faces per single second of screen time for the characters, resulting in tens of thousands of custom-tailored facial expressions that were manually swapped frame-by-frame.

Travis Knight serves as both director and CEO of LAIKA. His time was divided among managing studio operations, directing Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), and directing the live-action Bumblebee (2018). Wildwood didn't officially move into full physical production until May 2021. Even after full production started in 2021, physical stop-motion inherently moves at a crawl.

Animators typically produce only 1 to 2 seconds of footage per week per animator. Creating a 132-minute epic — shot by six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel using real lighting and physical miniature sets — took over 5 years of continuous shooting.

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