Stop-motion animation is a notoriously time-consuming method of making a film; Most features require several years of painstaking elaboration by large creative teams.
But few have lasted as long as Laika’s breathtaking fantasy epic “Wildwood,” which had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday.
Speaking on stage at the premiere with voice stars Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Jacob Tremblay, director Travis Knight explained the stop-motion process to the audience at the Royal Festival Hall.
“We basically produce thousands and thousands of these tiny objects, put them in front of a camera, adjust the lights and take one picture, move them a microscopic distance, take another picture, move them another microscopic distance, take another picture,” he said. “And we repeat this process over and over again until the film emerges or society collapses.”
Production on “Wildwood,” which Knight previously admitted was the most ambitious project Laika had ever attempted, began in 2021 amid COVID, but development had actually begun nearly 10 years earlier, when Laika optioned Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’ book.
“It took us 16 years to make this movie,” Knight explains. When we started, Barack Obama was a fresh-faced president in his first term. I could have become a medical doctor twice in the time it took us to make this movie. “A child born when we started this business could have dragged me to the premiere.”
Following its world premiere at the London Film Festival through October 17, “Laika” will be released in the US by Fathom Entertainment on October 23 and in the UK by Black Bear. The film is Laika’s first film to receive a PG-13 rating.