LAIKA’s ‘Wildwood’ Took Seven Years, 1,000 Artists and 140,000 Faces
TL;DR
- LAIKA’s “Wildwood” took seven years to make, with more than 1,000 people working on it.
- The film used 132 practical sets, 236 puppets and about 140,000 3D-printed faces.
- It opens in UK and Irish cinemas Oct. 23, and a Design Museum exhibition opens Oct. 15.
LONDON — October 14, 2026 — LAIKA’s stop-motion fantasy “Wildwood” took seven years to make, with more than 1,000 artists building 132 practical sets and printing 140,000 faces for 236 puppets, ahead of its UK cinema release Oct. 23.
The numbers matter because “Wildwood,” billed as the longest stop-motion feature ever made, tests whether handmade animation can scale to a blockbuster fantasy. It is also LAIKA’s sixth feature and its first to earn a PG-13 rating in the US.
“Wildwood is the biggest world Laika has ever built, and the most personal,” said Travis Knight, LAIKA’s president and chief executive and the film’s director, when the studio announced its release plans.
Seven Years and 1,000 Artists
More than 1,000 people worked on the film during its seven-year production, according to a Yahoo Entertainment production feature, and the studio expanded into a second building for extra stage space.
Production designer Nelson Lowry’s team designed 132 practical sets, many of them the largest the studio has built. Peak days felt like “Grand Central Station,” Lowry said.
Other published accounts cite 136 sets and 231 puppets, and note that LAIKA has been developing the adaptation of Colin Meloy’s novel since 2011.
Faces Break the Studio’s Own Record
LAIKA’s rapid prototyping team printed about 140,000 replacement faces for the film, Inverse reported, topping the 106,000 made for 2019’s “Missing Link.”
That earlier total earned a Guinness World Record for 3D-printed faces in a stop-motion film. Department head Brian McLean said the studio no longer reuses faces on “Wildwood.”
Each printed expression kit holds 24 faces, one for every frame in a second of film.
Big Sets, Handmade Details
“Every single thing was made by hand, truly,” said art director Matthew Maldonado, who spent five years designing and building the film’s sets.
Maldonado said the team built a miniature of Portland’s Pittock Mansion at 50% scale, and it still stands almost 13 feet tall.
Where UK Audiences Can See It
Black Bear releases “Wildwood” in UK and Irish cinemas Oct. 23, after its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Oct. 11.
“Wildwood: The Exhibition” runs at the Design Museum in Kensington from Oct. 15 to Jan. 10, 2027, with about seven of the film’s sets on display.
Tickets are required for the main exhibition, while a mezzanine display tracing LAIKA’s 20-year history is free.
This article was human-curated and verified for accuracy by Elena Vane after an initial AI-assisted draft.
Elena Vane is an award-winning comics historian and pop culture journalist. Specializing in the DC/Marvel universes and independent graphic novels, Elena has been documenting the rise of cosplay culture for over a decade . She is a frequent panelist at New York Comic Con and provides in-depth biographies of industry pioneers. Elena’s expertise ensures that every comic-related update is factually grounded and community-focused .
