It took 16 years, but Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis' Wildwood has finally made the jump from the page to theaters. LAIKA's stop-motion adaptation of the first book in the Wildwood Chronicles opened over the weekend, and while it was not a box office smash, it has quickly become one of the best-reviewed fantasy films of the year.
From Portland Bookshelves To Stop-Motion
Meloy, best known as the frontman of the Decemberists, wrote the books, while his wife Ellis illustrated them. The first novel follows Prue McKeel, a Portland girl whose baby brother Mac is carried off by a murder of crows into the Impassable Wilderness, a forest just outside the city that hides an entire world of talking animals, bandits, rival kingdoms and magic.
LAIKA director and CEO Travis Knight picked up the rights in 2010, only a year after Coraline was released. He has explained that the studio simply did not have the tools to bring a story of that scale to life back then, so LAIKA spent years building new puppets, rigs and techniques before it moved into production. The finished film was written by Chris Butler and features the voices of Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Prue, Jacob Tremblay as her classmate Curtis and Carey Mulligan as Alexandra, the grieving ruler who sets everything in motion.
A Fantasy That Does Not Talk Down To Kids
Readers of the book know it does not shy away from danger, and the film leans into that too. It received a rare PG-13 rating for an animated film, and in an interview with The New York Times, Knight said that was a direct result of the tragic violence in the story.
"Modern cinema generally tends to talk down to young audiences," he said. "But young people experience loss. They know what it's like to feel afraid."
That darker tone builds to an enormous battle in the woods, which Knight has described as the most difficult sequence LAIKA has ever made. He said it "required us to use every single technique," blending hand-drawn, stop-motion and CG animation into one sequence.
Strong Reviews, Softer Box Office
Critics have been extremely kind to the film. Wildwood holds a 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and opening-night audiences gave it an "A" CinemaScore. Many reviews have compared it to classic fantasy like Labyrinth, Narnia and even The Lord of the Rings, thanks to its sweeping forest war.
At the box office, the story is a little more complicated. Wildwood opened in third place with $12.27 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo. That is one of LAIKA's lower debuts, ahead of Missing Link but just behind Kubo and the Two Strings. The film is being released by Fathom Entertainment, and it runs over two hours, which can make it a tougher sell for families with younger kids.
Could We See More Wildwood?
Meloy's series continued with Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium, so there is plenty of story left if LAIKA ever wanted to return. Nothing has been announced, and given how long the first film took to make, fans should not expect a sequel anytime soon. Strong word of mouth over the coming weekends will go a long way toward deciding whether the studio ever goes back into the Impassable Wilderness.
It has been a big season for fantasy on the big screen, with Narnia: The Magician's Nephew showing off its first trailer and The Hunt for Gollum close to wrapping filming. Wildwood is in theaters now.
Have you read Colin Meloy's Wildwood books, and are you planning to see LAIKA's adaptation in theaters?
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