It’s been seven years since we were treated to a theatrical release by the geniuses at Laika. Their last release was Missing Link, an underrated stop-motion adventure featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, and more. The film was sadly a big financial misstep, grossing just $25 million worldwide against a reported production budget of $100 million. Next month, Laika are making their big comeback with the most ambitious project in their acclaimed catalog yet.
Based on the Colin Meloy-written and Carson Ellis-illustrated children’s fantasy novel, Wildwood is a visually stunning adventure that has been in the works at Laika since they purchased the rights 15 years ago. The recent release of a trailer showcased just how detailed and immersive this world will be, with fans of the animation studio who have waited many years for a big-screen return sure to not be let down. But, in the meantime, what’s the best way to get in the mood?
The answer to this question is seemingly to watch Coraline, the most famous and celebrated movie in Laika’s library, which also marks the perfect start to the spooky season celebrations. Starring Dakota Fanningas the titular Coraline, the film is based on a story by Neil Gaiman and is directed by stop-motion veteran Henry Selick, who delivers his deliciously gothic stylings in perhaps his greatest film. At the time of writing, Coraline is one of the ten most-streamed movies on Disney+ in the U.S. and continues to climb the charts, having just surpassed Toy Story 4 to take fifth place.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
The Rings of Power · Prime Video · Since 2022
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
One Piece · Manga since 1997 · Netflix 2023
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
The Witcher · Netflix · Since 2019
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
Percy Jackson · Disney+ · Since 2023
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for.
The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
Who Stars in the New Laika Movie?
Such an exciting, long-awaited project was always going to entice a star-studded voice cast. The ensemble is led by Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Prue McKeel, and she is joined by the likes of Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Angela Bassett, Richard E. Grant, Amandla Stenberg, Awkwafina, and two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali. A synopsis for the film reads, “A girl’s desperate quest to save her baby brother unfolds into a spectacular, high-stakes adventure through a forbidden forest full of enchanted creatures, endearing allies, and formidable adversaries — where an entire hidden realm hangs in the balance.”
Coraline is one of the ten most-streamed movies on Disney+ in the U.S. Stay tuned to Collider for more streaming stories.
