A $100 Million Stop-Motion Epic Opens to Rapturous Reviews and a Modest Box Office

LAIKA's long-awaited stop-motion fantasy "Wildwood" opened in theaters nationwide on October 23, pairing some of the best reviews of any animated film this year with an opening that fell well short of its reported $100 million production cost. The film took in roughly $4.3 million on its first day, according to Box Office Mojo's tally, a start that trade estimates put on pace for an $11 million to $14 million three-day debut. The film is confirmed as now playing in theaters on LAIKA's own official site.

The film marks LAIKA's first theatrical release since 2019's "Missing Link" and the Hillsboro, Oregon, studio's most expensive project to date. It arrived in theaters through an unusual arrangement: rather than a traditional studio partner, LAIKA struck a deal announced in a January press release on Business Wire that put Fathom Entertainment, the exhibitor-owned company best known for one-off event screenings, in charge of its domestic theatrical run, with FilmNation Entertainment handling international sales.

An opening split down the middle

The numbers tell two different stories depending on which one is emphasized. On Rotten Tomatoes, "Wildwood" holds a Tomatometer score of 100 percent from 110 critic reviews, with an audience score of 98 percent from more than 500 verified ratings on the same page. Metacritic places it at 85, a figure rarely reached by wide-release animation.

Commercially, the picture is less triumphant. Box Office Mojo's distributor and release-date listing shows the film opened domestically on October 23 under Fathom's banner, and early trade coverage, including a same-day report from ComicBasics, put Friday's gross, including roughly $1 million from Thursday preview screenings, in line with the stronger end of pre-release tracking rather than the breakout some had hoped for. That outlet also noted the opening day comfortably beat LAIKA's previous films at the same stage, including "Missing Link," which opened to just $1.6 million in 2019.

Pre-release tracking had been unusually wide, ranging from roughly $5 million to $15 million, according to a long-range forecast from Box Office Pro cited in multiple trade outlets. The film opened the same weekend as Warner Bros.' "Clayface," a crowded marketplace that left less room for a 132-to-140-minute, PG-13 stop-motion drama aimed chiefly at adults rather than families.

Sixteen years, one forest

"Wildwood" is based on the 2011 novel by Colin Meloy, the frontman of the Decemberists, and illustrator Carson Ellis. Director Travis Knight, LAIKA's president and chief executive, has said the project took roughly sixteen years to bring to the screen, waiting on techniques and tools that did not exist when development began. The cast includes Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Mahershala Ali and Angela Bassett, according to the film's official Rotten Tomatoes page and the studio's own announcement materials.

"Wildwood is the biggest world LAIKA has ever built, and the most personal," Travis Knight said in the studio's January announcement of its distribution plan.

That announcement, distributed through Business Wire, also quoted FilmNation chief executive Glen Basner describing the project as the studio's "most extraordinary film to date." LAIKA's own press materials distributed through Fathom describe the story as a girl's quest to rescue her baby brother from an enchanted, forbidden forest, and note that FilmNation represents the film internationally while Fathom handles the domestic run.

A studio insulated by patient money

The split verdict matters most to LAIKA itself, a 20-year-old studio owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight, Travis Knight's father. That ownership structure has repeatedly been cited by industry observers as the reason LAIKA has been able to keep making expensive, labor-intensive stop-motion films despite a mixed box-office record; "Missing Link" lost money for the studio despite strong reviews and a Golden Globe win. A detailed assessment published October 21 by the trade newsletter World of Reel argued the film's PG-13 rating and lengthy runtime would narrow its audience largely to adult animation enthusiasts, even as it called "Wildwood" an early frontrunner for the Academy Award for best animated feature.

Fathom Entertainment, a joint venture of exhibitors including AMC and Cinemark, is also being watched closely. Its usual business is one-night concert films and classic re-releases; "Wildwood" is one of its first attempts at a full first-run wide release, a test case for whether exhibitor-owned distribution can substitute for a traditional studio marketing and release apparatus. A pre-release account in TheWrap noted the partnership was itself a notable departure from how LAIKA had released its five previous features, each through a major studio distributor.

What happens next

LAIKA and Fathom have not said whether they will expand the film's theater count in subsequent weekends or lean on reviews and word of mouth for a slower, platform-style rollout, a strategy that has worked for specialty releases but is uncommon for a nine-figure production. The studio's awards push is expected to continue regardless of the commercial result, given the critical consensus and the relative lack of competition so far in the animated feature category this awards season.

For LAIKA, the test is less about any single weekend than about whether "Wildwood" can build to a respectable theatrical run and a long afterlife in streaming and home video, the pattern that eventually made "Coraline" and "Kubo and the Two Strings" profitable over time despite underwhelming openings. Final box office figures for the full three-day weekend were expected from box office trackers within days of the film's release.