There’s a chill in the air, the evenings are getting darker, and the scent of pumpkin spice is wafting through our favourite coffee shops already. All of which can only mean one thing: autumn is finally here. And with it is about to come the eagerly awaited release of Laika’s newest stop-motion epic, Wildwood, which arrives exclusively in theatres around the world on 23 October.
An ambitious new cinematic adventure from the studio behind Coraline, ParaNorman, Kubo And The Two Strings and more, Wildwood is about to take audiences on a truly unmissable journey filled with magic, mystery, love, loss, and cutlass-wielding coyotes. Adapted from The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy’s bestselling fantasy book, Laika’s latest follows Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a plucky young Portlander who finds herself venturing into an enchanted forest — a wild wood, you could say — on a daring mission to rescue her baby brother after he’s kidnapped by a flock of crows.
Envisioned by director and Laika CEO Travis Knight as “the stop-motion Lord Of The Rings” in terms of its sheer scope and scale, and boasting an all-star voice cast including the likes of Carey Mulligan, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali, and Jacob Tremblay, Wildwood — a movie some 16 years in the making — is the kind of film that bricks and mortar multiplexes are made for.
From the immersive sets of Pittock Mansion, the Impassable Wilderness, and the Coyote Warren, to the thousands of individually placed feathers adorning a great eagle’s wings and the microscopic expressions on hundreds of painstakingly puppeteered faces, to the dizzyingly ambitious set-pieces, each forged one frame at a time, Wildwood is a love letter to human artistry written on the biggest canvas imaginable. And so it follows that it should be seen on the biggest screen possible. Speaking of which…
With Wildwood’s 23 October release scarcely a month away, we come bearing exciting news. Tickets for Laika’s fantasy blockbuster are officially on sale now. And if you head on over to WILDWOODMOVIE.COM, you can get your tickets purchased and learn more about what Travis Knight and his team have been cooking out in Oregon over the last nigh-on two decades. So what are you waiting for? Go! Get your tickets! And we’ll see you down in the woods next month…
