It may have been 15 years now since Laika Studios first acquired the rights to adapt Colin Meloy’s YA fantasy epic Wildwood, but as the saying goes, all good things come to those who wait — and Travis Knight’s stop-motion epic does look very good. With the first teaser for Knight’s movie having racked up a staggering 90 million views and counting on YouTube alone, today Laika has unveiled a new trailer for its long-gestating latest — this one bringing Carey Mulligan’s complex human antagonist Alexandra into the spotlight as Wildwood‘s tale of love, loss, and war comes into sharper focus. Check it out below;
Ooft… talk about all the feels! ‘How far would you go for those you love?’ asks this latest trailer for Wildwood. And the answer appears to be resounding: however far it takes. As we see here, Kubo And The Two Strings director Knight and veteran Laika writer Chris Butler are pulling out all the stops to tug the heartstrings and take the breath away with Wildwood, positioning this Narnia-esque fantasy yarn as the story of a grieving mother trying to reckon with and seek some sort of retribution for the loss of her son, and a distraught sister (that’d be Peyton Elizabeth Lee’s plucky Portlander Prue McKeel) desperately trying to find her crow-nabbed baby brother in an enchanted, well, wild wood.
Throw in a war for the very soul of Wildwood, a slew of factions — human and otherwise — all fighting for their own deeply personal causes, and some thorny politics at play as Prue and her classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) head into the woods, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for what appears to be another nailed-on Laika banger. (Also, did you see the trebuchets? The armies? The sword-wielding coyotes? Knight wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted told Empire he wanted to make the stop-motion Lord Of The Rings… sheesh!)
The official synopsis for Wildwood — whose starry ensemble includes Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Richard E. Grant, Awkwafina, Amandla Stenberg, and actual Tom Waits — reads: ““After her baby brother is abducted by a murder of crows, headstrong teenager Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) launches a desperate rescue mission into the Impassable Wilderness—an enchanted forest hidden just beyond Portland, Oregon. Joined by her hapless but loyal classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), Prue navigates a world of talking animals, bandits, and powerful figures driven by grief and ambition. As the pair is drawn into a conflict threatening the balance of the forest itself, Prue must discover the strength and belief she never knew she possessed. If she hopes to save her brother and protect Wildwood’s fragile future, she will have to risk everything.”
We look forward to heading into the woods with Wildwood when Laika’s latest hits cinemas globally on 23 October. And if you can’t wait that long, then Empire has got you covered. Pick up a copy of our Rings Of Powers Season 3 issue, available at all good and evil magazine sellers right now, and you’ll find a bonus 16-page Wildwood magazine filled with exclusive interviews, images, insights, and more. What are you waiting for? Quick! Grab one! Now!
