Wildwood review counts four Laika Oscar nominations, but the studio is five for five

Laika's Wildwood had its world premiere at the London Film Festival, and Deadline's review opens with the studio's awards record: Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations for "all four of its first films", which it lists as Coraline, ParaNorman, Missing Link and Kubo and the Two Strings.

Laika has made five films before Wildwood, not four, and all five were nominated. The one missing from the list is The Boxtrolls.

The streak, counted properly

• Coraline (2009): directed by Henry Selick. Nominated.
• ParaNorman (2012): directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler. Nominated for the Oscar and the BAFTA.
• The Boxtrolls (2014): directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, based on Alan Snow's novel Here Be Monsters! Nominated for the Oscar and the Golden Globe.
• Kubo and the Two Strings (2016): directed by Travis Knight. Nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best Visual Effects, only the second animated film to get the latter after The Nightmare Before Christmas. It won the BAFTA.
• Missing Link (2019): directed by Chris Butler. Nominated for the Oscar and won the Golden Globe.

So the streak Wildwood is trying to extend is five for five. Deadline says it "could well continue"; if it does, it will be six.

Two more details in the review

The review praises "the book's gorgeous illustrations by Caron Ellis". The illustrator is Carson Ellis, author Colin Meloy's wife, who worked with him through the writing to produce 85 illustrations for the 541-page novel, published on August 30, 2011.

It also says cinematographer Caleb Deschanel is working on an animated film for the first time. Deschanel, a six-time Oscar nominee for films including The Right Stuff, The Natural and The Passion of the Christ, was the cinematographer on The Lion King (2019), the CG remake, and won the Visual Effects Society award for Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a CG Project for it. Wildwood is his first stop-motion film, which is a narrower and more accurate claim.

What the film is

Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) promises her parents (Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson) she will look after her baby brother Mac. A murder of crows snatches him from the streets of Portland and carries him into the forbidden forest next to the city. Prue goes after him, followed by her awkward classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), and both are pulled into a hidden society of talking animals, bandits and uniformed coyotes.

• Villain: the Dowager Governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), a mother destroyed by the death of her only son.
• Allies and others: the General, a great eagle (Angela Bassett); Brendan, leader of the Bandits (Mahershala Ali); Maksim, a coyote soldier (Tom Waits); Iphigenia (Tantoo Cardinal); Dmitri (Charlie Day); Rex, an aging owl (Richard E. Grant); and Septima, a rat (Awkwafina).
• Director: Travis Knight, Laika's CEO, from his hometown of Portland.
• Screenplay: Chris Butler, director of Missing Link and co-director of ParaNorman.
• Producers: Knight and Sam Wilson.
• Rating and length: PG-13, 2 hours 12 minutes. It is Laika's first PG-13 film.
• Release: October 23 through Fathom. The North American premiere opens AFI Fest in Hollywood later this month.

Deadline's verdict is warm: a visual knockout on a scale rarely attempted in stop motion, and "yet another Laika stop-motion gem". It places the story in the tradition of The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, while saying the film is not quite on that mountain.

The review gives Deschanel much of the credit for the look: built partly on Carson Ellis's illustrations, the film's camera makes stop motion feel like live action. The story runs past two hours and ends in a battle royale, with Prue returning to the forest for a fight to the finish.

A long road from 2011

Laika announced the film in 2011, the year the book came out. Production started in 2021. The studio is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and Travis Knight, and based in Hillsboro, Oregon, in the Portland area. Its next projects include The Night Gardener, from an original story by Ozark creator Bill Dubuque, and an adaptation of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, both to be directed by Knight.

What is still unknown

• Australian release. No local date or distributor has been announced.
• The budget of Laika's most ambitious film to date.
• Whether the sequels follow. Meloy's book was followed by Under Wildwood; no further film has been mentioned.

Deadline counts four Laika films and four nominations. The real record is five for five, and Wildwood, the studio's first PG-13 film, arrives 15 years after it was announced as the attempt at six.