Laika’s Wildwood arrives in theaters today carrying the kind of reviews most films only dream about. The stop-motion studio’s first feature since Missing Link in 2019 holds a perfect 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, drawn from 91 reviews, as it opens wide across the United States through Fathom Entertainment.
The film’s arrival comes with one more treat for anyone still deciding. DiscussingFilm shared a new clip from IGN, a full scene running just over two minutes, and it doubles as a tour of everything Laika does best.
In the scene, Prue McKeel is working undercover inside Alexandra’s grand manor, edging down candlelit halls with a tray of soup bowls while she looks for a way through. The house’s uniformed dog guards are the obstacle. One is slumped asleep over a table, but the quiet does not last, and the clip ends in a flat-out chase through the foyer, with Prue sprinting toward the camera and a sprawling heap of gold waiting at the far end of the hall.
Wildwood is built around Peyton Elizabeth Lee, who voices Prue, a Portland teenager who follows a murder of crows into the forbidden forest on the edge of her city after they carry off her baby brother, Mac. Lee, who first made her name as the star of Disney Channel’s Andi Mack, has been at the center of this site’s coverage of the film all year, and the notices since the London premiere have singled her out, as our earlier report on the premiere reviews detailed.
Director Travis Knight adapted Colin Meloy’s novel, illustrated by Carson Ellis, with a screenplay by Chris Butler. Jacob Tremblay voices Prue’s classmate Curtis, Carey Mulligan plays Alexandra, the governess who rules the manor in the clip, Mahershala Ali plays Brenden, and Angela Bassett voices the General, a giant golden eagle who becomes one of Prue’s most important allies.
The craft behind the film is staggering even by Laika standards. At 2 hours and 12 minutes, Wildwood is the longest stop-motion feature ever made, built from 231 puppets and 136 sets. The General alone took three separate puppets and some 12,000 feathers, each one cut, dyed and glued into place by hand, as our look at the eagle’s creation explored last month.
UPDATE, Sunday, Oct 25, 10:12 a.m.: The film’s songs and both soundtrack albums added.
The music brings the story full circle. Wildwood started as a novel by Colin Meloy, frontman of The Decemberists, and Deadline‘s rundown of the songs in the film shows how much of that came with it: Meloy wrote three new songs for the movie, including ‘The Better Part of Bravery,’ which The Decemberists perform over the end credits, and ‘Bandit Kind,’ sung in the film by Amandla Stenberg. Portugal. The Man’s ‘You Can Count on Me’ features as well, alongside Loretta Lynn’s ‘Portland, Oregon’ with Jack White, a wink to the story’s home turf. The soundtrack album, built around Dario Marianelli’s score, is out now on Decca Records, and it already has a companion: Wildwood Sessions, an album of songs inspired by the film from artists with Portland ties, among them Portugal. The Man, Aminé, Still Woozy and The Decemberists, which arrived October 16 and is streaming now.
UPDATE, Sunday, Nov 1, 6:36 a.m.: Final opening weekend box office added.
Its first weekend backed up the reviews, and the final numbers came in stronger than the Sunday estimates. Wildwood opened at No. 3 with $12.3 million domestically, $12,273,561 from 2,596 theaters, well ahead of the $6 million to $8 million it had been projected to earn and close to the $12.6 million opening of Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings in 2016. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an A grade, matching the perfect critics score it opened with.
Wildwood is now playing in theaters nationwide, and it is rated PG-13. Showtimes and ticket links for the weekend are gathered in the Now Playing guide.