Laika has been nominated for five best animated feature Oscars. It has lost every single one.
For nearly two decades, the Portland, Oregon-based stop-motion animation studio, backed by Nike billionaire Phil Knight and run by his son Travis Knight, has produced some of Hollywood’s most painstakingly crafted movies — only to watch Disney or Pixar take home the trophy every time.
But this year, the winds have shifted. Disney has lost four consecutive Oscar races; Pixar hasn’t won in the category since 2021. The Academy’s increasingly international membership has embraced everything from The Boy and the Heron to Flow. And Laika has mounted its biggest gamble yet: Wildwood, a PG-13 fantasy that took more than five years, more than 1,000 workers and a reported $100 million-plus to produce. It could finally win them that Oscar.
Directed by Travis Knight, Wildwood is the first film Laika is essentially self-releasing, partnering with Fathom Events to get into theaters and handling marketing entirely on its own. That included pop-up events at the Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals, a world premiere at the London Film Festival and a $12 million opening weekend on just 1,400 screens — particularly notable for an animated movie with a PG-13 rating, even with that nine-figure budget.
But its team isn’t leaving its Oscar chances entirely to the movie itself. The studio has been flying awards voters and journalists to Portland to witness the extraordinary labor behind its films — a campaign designed to make the craftsmanship impossible to ignore. The puppets, sets, microscopically detailed props and shockingly lifelike faces are all handmade by people — many of them the same ones who worked on the studio’s first movie, 2009’s Coraline.