LAIKA has unveiled a first look at its new dark fantasy movie Wildwood – and it looks just as stunning and otherworldly as we’ve come to expect from the stop-motion animation studio.
The brief-but-epic teaser is currently showing before Coraline, which has been remastered and rereleased in cinemas in honor of its 15th anniversary. Based on Colin Meloy’s 2011 novel of the same name, Wildwood is set to introduce two new protagonists to LAIKA’s roster: Prue McKeel and Curtis Melhberg, both of whom can be seen in silhouette at the end of the clip.
Light on plot reveals, the promo, which you can watch above, establishes the film’s visual tone instead, which looks to us like a combination of some of the best Switch games, like Oxenfree, Night in the Woods, Ori and the Blind Forest, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
It opens with a montage of LAIKA’s previous works, including Coraline, ParaNorman, and Kubo and the Two Strings, as a voiceover says, “There are places in the world that people were never meant to go. Dark forests where the trees hide darker secrets. When the first settlers came here, they called these woods the Impassable Wilderness,” it continues, as wolves with glowing eyes slink across the screen and a bearded man with an axe stands up into frame. It was a warning, to keep away.”
The camera then pulls backwards, before we stop behind our pint-sized heroes and ‘Wildwood’ spells out above them.
Set in Portland, Oregon, Wildwood sees seventh-graders Prue and Curtis venture into a hidden, magical woodland to rescue the former’s baby brother, who’s supposedly been kidnapped by a murder of crows. Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina, Amandla Stenberg, Carey Mulligan, Jake Johnson, Mahershala Ali, Richard E. Grant, and Angela Bassett lend their voices to the Travis Knight-directed flick.
Wildwood will release sometime in 2025. While we wait, check out our list of the best animated movies, or our roundup of all the upcoming movies heading our way.
