After a sojourn into the “Transformers” universe with “Bumblebee,” Travis Knight is returning to his cinematic roots, stop-motion animation. Well, to be fair, he’s also still directing the live-action “Masters of the Universe” tentpole for Amazon MGM Studios and Mattel, but concurrently he’s directing his first stop-motion animation film in over eight years, “Wildwood.” In a surprise, Knight’s animation studio, LAIKA, has released a captivating teaser of the movie that we suspect will arrive in theaters sometime in 2025.
An adaptation of the popular 2011 Colin Meloy novel, “Wildwood” follows a young teenage girl, Prue McKeel, as she ventures into the woods of Portland, Oregon (coincidentally where LAIKA is based), to find her kidnapped brother. Peyton Elizabeth Lee (“Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.”) is the voice of Prue and she’s joined by a cast that reportedly includes Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Charlie Day, Jake Johnson, Maya Erskine, and Tom Waitts, among others (and always subject to change). Acclaimed Oscar-winning -composer Dario Marianelli (“Atonement”) will score the production while the legendary six-time Academy Award-nominated Caleb Deschanel is set as cinematographer.
In the works for over 14 years, Knight has said the movie is the most “ambitious” film LAIKA has ever made due to its scale using stop-motion animation.
Intriguingly, despite a long history with Focus Features, there is no distributor confirmed for “Wildwood” at this time. Its last feature, 2019’s “Missing Link,” was released by Annapurna Pictures via the now-shuttered United Artists Releasing
You can watch the preview embedded in this post.