Wildwood Trailer: Laika's Stunning Stop-motion Adventure Could Be One Of 2026's Best Films

What's a world without stop-motion? Laika, the Oregon-based film studio behind such modern animated classics as "Coraline" and "ParaNorman," is finally returning this year with "Wildwood," its first stop-motion feature since 2019's "Missing Link" misfired at the box office. And while I'll confess to being lukewarm on the story and characters for that one, it was just as aesthetically spectacular as anything else the production house has crafted. Now, with "Wildwood" taking Laika back to its darker fantasy roots, we might just be in for one of the best pictures of 2026.

That's certainly the impression I get from its trailer, which left me feeling very emotional all by itself. Directed by Laika co-founder Travis Knight (fresh off helming this summer's surprisingly substantial "Masters of the Universe" live-action movie) and adapted from Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis' 2011 novel by longtime Laika screenwriter Chris Butler, the movie follows a young girl (Peyton Elizabeth Lee's Prue McKeel) growing up in Laika's backyard near Portland as she and a classmate (Jacob Tremblay's Curtis Mehlberg) set out to rescue her infant brother after he's kidnapped by a pack of crows and taken to a supposedly magical forest. But why did these foul fowls nab Prue's sibling to begin with?

As we see in the "Wildwood" trailer, they did so at the behest of Carey Mulligan's Alexandra, a woman who suffered the terrible loss of her own son. A story about a grief-stricken mother doing horrific things in order to cope with her pain recalls, of all things, "Talk to Me" filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou's feel-bad 2025 horror flick "Bring Her Back," and honestly? As someone who was reared on stuff like "Return to Oz" and animated Don Bluth movies, I'm all for this kind of emotionally challenging, family-friendly fare.

Laika

The hard truth is that, for whatever reason, stop-motion animation has always been a tough sell in theaters. It's why the stop-motion likes of filmmaker Henry Selick's criminally underseen horror-comedy "Wendell & Wild" and even Guillermo del Toro's Oscar-winning "Pinocchio" have been sequestered to streaming in recent years, along with almost every one of "Wallace and Gromit" creators Aardman Animations' projects in the U.S. Speaking of which: Aardman's "Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom" is actually coming to theaters domestically in September, so if you wanna help to change things by voting with your dollar, now's the time to do so. (Trust me: Every "Shaun the Sheep" flick is a dialogue-free delight.)

By the same token, you should definitely try and see "Wildwood" in a theater if you can. On top of being, based on the early footage, an absolute visual feast crammed full of astonishingly detailed stop-motion imagery, it's overflowing with amazing voice actors that, along with its stars, includes Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Jemaine Clement, Jake Johnson, Amandla Stenberg, Awkwafina, Richard E. Grant, Maya Erskine, Charlie Day, Tom Waits, and Marc Evan Jackson, among others. Indeed, as strong as 2026 has been for animation on the whole (complete with a shockingly inspired "Minions" film), Laika's latest might just be this year's animated movie to beat.

"Wildwood" hits the big screen on October 23, 2026.