Wildwood: 231 handmade puppets in the year everyone is talking about AI

In a year when much of the film conversation revolves around AI-generated video, the most talked-about animated film of the season was made frame by frame, with puppets moved by hand.

Wildwood, from the American studio LAIKA, opened in US theaters on October 23, 2026, and in Brazil on October 29, where it is titled O Bosque Selvagem. It is the studio’s first feature since Missing Link in 2019.

For anyone who works on brand films, it is more than a good weekend outing. It is a lesson in production.

The film

The story adapts the book by Colin Meloy, illustrated by Carson Ellis. After her baby brother is taken by a flock of crows, teenager Prue McKeel heads into a forbidden forest outside Portland, Oregon, to rescue him. Her classmate Curtis Mehlberg goes with her.

It is directed by Travis Knight, who also runs LAIKA, and written by Chris Butler. The original voice cast includes Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay and Tom Waits. In the Brazilian dub, Giulia Benite voices Prue.

It is LAIKA’s sixth feature. According to the official release, all five earlier films, from Coraline to Missing Link, were nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. The studio’s bar is high, and the new film was made to clear it.

The official launch release calls the film a “handcrafted epic fantasy.” The word is there on purpose. It is the selling point.

The numbers behind the handwork

Stop-motion is the technique where every frame is a photograph. The animator moves the puppet a few millimeters, takes a picture, moves it again. That is 24 frames for every second of film.

In Wildwood, the scale is rare:

• 231 puppets and 136 sets, according to Variety.
• More than 142,000 3D-printed faces, according to the Jornal do Brasil review. Each expression is a piece swapped between one frame and the next.
• About 130 minutes long, which ties the record for the longest English-language animated feature, according to Variety.
• 16 years to make the movie, in Knight’s words to Deadline.

There are computers in the process, of course. LAIKA itself won a Scientific and Technical Oscar in 2016 for 3D printing in animation. Parts of the sky, the water and distant sets use digital effects. But what you see up front, the puppet, the costume, the forest floor, was built and moved by people.

Why this matters now

The release landed at a curious moment. In the same weeks, this blog covered Kling 4.0 generating 30-second takes and an AI film promoted by Elon Musk. Meanwhile, LAIKA spent more than a decade making one film.

It would be easy to read this as a fight: hand versus machine. That is not the most useful reading.

The point is different. LAIKA turned time and care into part of the story it tells the audience. The trailer doesn’t just sell the adventure. It sells the fact that someone made it, piece by piece. And the reviews repeat the same idea: what impresses is the hand behind the image.

When any image can be generated, proof that someone decided every detail becomes value.

What a brand film can learn from it

No brand needs 16 years for a 30-second film. But three lessons from Wildwood apply to any production, with or without AI:

• The process tells the story too. Showing the behind-the-scenes, the decisions and the choices gives the audience one more reason to trust what it sees. LAIKA has been posting behind-the-scenes videos on its official channel for months.
• Scale without direction becomes noise. 231 puppets only work because every shot has a purpose. The same goes for anyone generating 50 AI takes: the job is to choose, cut and make sense of them.
• Tools and craft are not opposites. LAIKA mixes physical puppets, 3D printing and digital effects, and is clear about what each one is. Anyone using AI in a brand film gains from the same transparency.

Where to see it

Wildwood is in theaters now. In Brazil it is distributed by Imagem Filmes and rated 14+: a denser film than Coraline, not an animation for little kids. The official final trailer is above, on LAIKA’s channel.

This blog’s take

This blog is about directing films with AI, and that is exactly why it is worth looking at a film that chose the slowest path possible. The tool changes. What audiences recognize stays the same: someone who knew what they wanted and decided every frame.