Dear Oscars: Don’t Let Laika and ‘Wildwood’ Fail. There Is No Backup Stop-Motion Studio Waiting in the Wings

Awards Circuit Column: Laika’s “Wildwood” opened to $12 million against a reported $100 million budget. If the last American stop-motion studio can’t survive, the art form may not either.

By Clayton Davis

Clayton Davis

Chief Awards Editor

Latest

• Dear Oscars: Don’t Let Laika and ‘Wildwood’ Fail. There Is No Backup Stop-Motion Studio Waiting in the Wings 7 minutes ago
• Oscar Predictions: Animated Feature — A New and Competitive Era for the Medium That Isn’t Just for Kids 2 days ago
• Oscar Predictions: Documentary Feature — Will the Branch Embrace ‘You Can See Everything’ or Snub the Frontrunner (Again)? 3 days ago

• Comments

Travis Knight built 231 puppets and 136 sets to make “Wildwood.” Over the Laika film’s opening three-day weekend, audiences at 2,942 theaters bought enough tickets to cover roughly a 10th of what the film reportedly cost.

“Wildwood” opened to $12.2 million, behind DC’s “Clayface” and the Elizabeth Holmes documentary nobody can stop talking about. It earned an A CinemaScore and a 99% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This past weekend, it came in at No. 3 with another $7.5 million, bringing its grand total to $25 million domestically and $35 million globally.

Related Stories

AMC Theatres Sets All-Time Record for Quarterly Revenue, Thanks to 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' and 'The Odyssey'