LAIKA's acclaimed 'Wildwood' can't translate rave reviews into box office, falls 39% in second weekend

"Wildwood," the stop-motion animated fantasy from Laika, took in an estimated $7.5 million over its second weekend in North American theaters, a 39% drop from its October debut that leaves the $100 million production on track to lose money despite near-universal critical acclaim, according to data from Box Office Mojo.

The film, distributed domestically by Fathom Entertainment, has now earned $25.9 million domestically and roughly $28.9 million worldwide through Sunday, against a reported $100 million budget tracked by The Numbers. It held at third place for a second straight weekend, trailing "Clayface" and the A24 documentary "You Can See Everything," according to trade analysis published Sunday by World of Reel.

A costly, 16-year passion project

Directed by Laika chief executive Travis Knight, "Wildwood" adapts the first book in Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis's 2011 young-adult fantasy series, following a Portland teenager who ventures into an enchanted forest to rescue her kidnapped baby brother. The adaptation took roughly 16 years to reach the screen and used 136 handcrafted sets and 231 practical puppets; one character alone required about 3,000 hours of fabrication, details reported in an Associated Press profile of the studio published ahead of release.

Laika, based in Hillsboro, Oregon, has built its identity around that painstaking handmade process since releasing its debut feature, "Coraline," in 2009. Every one of its five prior films was shot frame by frame using physical puppets and sets rather than computer animation, a technique the studio has leaned on even as rival animation houses have moved toward digital and, increasingly, AI-assisted production pipelines.

At 132 minutes, it is Laika's longest film and its first to carry a PG-13 rating, awarded for "strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material" along with brief partial nudity and language, a rating reflected on the film's Rotten Tomatoes page, which also shows a 99% critics' score from 159 reviews and a 97% audience score.

Knight, whose father Phil Knight — the Nike co-founder who chairs Laika — has helped underwrite the studio's famously expensive, labor-intensive productions, framed the film as a rebuttal to AI-generated animation in an interview published on AJC.com, carrying the Associated Press's Fall Movie Preview coverage by Jake Coyle.

"There is a yearning for something that's handmade, for something that someone has cared into existence," Knight said. "It's always been rare, it's always been special. But it's even more so now."

The voice cast is unusually starry for a stop-motion feature. Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Jacob Tremblay lead as siblings Prue McKeel and Curtis Mehlberg, with Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jake Johnson, Maya Erskine, Tom Waits and Richard E. Grant rounding out the ensemble, according to the film's own page on Laika's official site.

A familiar pattern for Laika

The soft hold echoes a trajectory the studio has seen before. Laika's 2016 release "Kubo and the Two Strings" opened to $12.6 million before falling 37.8% to $7.8 million in its second weekend — almost identical, in both raw numbers and percentage terms, to "Wildwood's" $12.3 million opening and subsequent $7.5 million second weekend. "Kubo" went on to lose money for the studio despite earning an Oscar nomination for best animated feature.

Laika's most recent film before "Wildwood," 2019's "Missing Link," fared worse, opening to just $5.8 million against its own $100 million budget and finishing its run with roughly $26 million domestically — a result widely described in trade coverage as one of the worst wide-release debuts of the decade. The studio's best-known title, 2009's "Coraline," remains its top domestic earner; a 2024 theatrical rerelease alone brought in $52.4 million worldwide, according to the AP profile.

"Wildwood" also marks a distribution shift for the studio. Focus Features, which released Laika's prior three features, ended its relationship with the studio after "Kubo," leaving the specialty exhibitor-owned Fathom Entertainment — a venture jointly backed by AMC and Cinemark — to handle "Wildwood's" wide domestic release, with FilmNation Entertainment managing international sales.

Reviews versus receipts

Critics have been nearly unanimous in praising the film. Beyond its 99% Rotten Tomatoes score, "Wildwood" holds an 88 on Metacritic, denoting "universal acclaim," and earned an "A" CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences — an unusually strong grade for a film now being described in industry coverage as a likely financial loss. World of Reel's Sunday box office analysis called the second-weekend hold "respectable" by industry standards even while projecting the film is unlikely to break even once marketing costs are factored in alongside the unconfirmed $100 million production budget.

The box office softness has not dimmed expectations for awards-season attention; "Wildwood" has been widely discussed in trade press as a leading contender for the best animated feature Oscar, a category Laika has been nominated in four times — for "Coraline," "ParaNorman," "Boxtrolls" and "Kubo and the Two Strings" — without a win.

What's next

"Wildwood" will expand into additional international markets in the coming weeks, with the United Kingdom, Australia and several European territories already reporting releases alongside the North American rollout. Domestically, its theater count actually grew slightly between weekends, from roughly 2,840 to nearly 2,940 locations, even as per-screen averages fell from about $4,327 to roughly $870 — a sign exhibitors are still backing the film despite its thinning per-theater returns.

Whether "Wildwood" ultimately recoups its budget will depend heavily on international box office, home-entertainment revenue and any awards-season bump from a prospective Oscar nomination, none of which will be clear for months. For now, the film stands as the latest data point in an uncomfortable pattern for Laika: extraordinary critical respect that has not, in nearly a decade, reliably translated into box office that matches the studio's costs.