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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.
And it did all that with a PG-13 rating, a 131-minute run time and a studio that has earned five Oscar nods for animated feature in five tries. Against a reported $100 million budget, this doesn’t feel like a win. It feels like an alarm sounding for the health of the stop-motion animation community.
Stop-motion is more expensive than traditional animation because every character is a physical puppet, every set is built by hand and animators nudge each figure a fraction of an inch and photograph it dozens of times for a single second of film.
Stop-motion is a labor force, and that labor force is shrinking. Tippett Studio, the shop that helped teach Hollywood how to move from puppets to pixels, has announced that it is closing. Laika is now the only American studio still investing nine figures in the art form, and it exists largely because Phil Knight’s Nike fortune has absorbed losses that would have shuttered almost any other operation. Laika’s previous film, “Missing Link,” grossed $17 million domestically in 2019. It spent seven years making the follow-up.
Travis Knight is Phil Knight’s son and Laika’s CEO. Nepotism, by its usual definition, can buy access. But the Knights have used their resources to pursue stop motion at a time when other shops are turning off the lights. That’s using your powers for good.
Travis Knight knows what’s at stake. “We’ve tried to keep the art form alive for over 20 years now,” he told Variety after a “Wildwood” screening at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. He added, “Art needs advocacy. It needs champions. It wears its humanity openly. It deserves to stay alive.”
This is where the Academy could make a difference. The Academy has long treated animation as a separate lane, even as the medium has produced some of cinema’s most ambitious and emotionally sophisticated work. Only three animated films have been nominated for best picture; the most recent, “Toy Story 3,” arrived 15 years ago.
A best picture nomination would put Laika on the industry’s biggest stage in a news cycle drowning in AI. Academy voters have a chance to affirm that physical labor and the human touch still matters.
One Academy member says of “Wildwood”: “I was transported. It reminded me of the movies my children would watch in the ’80s, when movies believed children were smart enough to understand the difficult moments of life.”
That is the perfect argument for “Wildwood” and for Laika. Hollywood is built on imagination and should be wary of letting one of its most distinctive forms of filmmaking become extinct.
Not every movie needs to be made the way “Wildwood” was. But if Hollywood wants to keep that possibility alive, somebody has to buy a ticket and somebody has to vote.
This week’s updated predictions are below.
See all Academy Awards predictions
Variety Awards Circuit: Oscars
Oscars Predictions Tracking
(Nov. 5, 2026)
(In alphabetical order. Ranked choices are on each individual category page.)
Best Picture
“Artificial” (Neon)
“The Debut” (A24)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“Elsinore” (Focus Features)
“The Invite” (A24)
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
“You Can See Everything” (A24)
Director
Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, “You Can See Everything” (A24)
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, “Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
Christopher Nolan, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Denis Villeneuve, “Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
Actor
Matt Damon, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Ryan Gosling, “Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
John Malkovich, “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
Andrew Scott, “Elsinore” (Focus Features) ***
John Turturro, “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Actress
Emily Blunt, “Disclosure Day” (Universal Pictures)
Sandra Hüller, “Rose” (Mubi)
Julianne Moore, “The Debut” (A24) ***
Inde Navarrette, “Obsession” (Focus Features)
Olivia Wilde, “The Invite” (A24)
Supporting Actor
Andrew Garfield, “Artificial” (Neon) ***
Paul Giamatti, “The Debut” (A24)
Guitarricadelafuente, “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
John Leguizamo, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Sam Rockwell, “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
Supporting Actress
Olivia Colman, “Elsinore” (Focus Features)
Penélope Cruz, “The Invite” (A24)
Anne Hathaway, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
Samantha Morton, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Amanda Seyfried, “You Can See Everything” (A24)
Original Screenplay
“Artificial” (Neon) — Simon Rich
“The Debut” (A24) — Jesse Eisenberg
“Elsinore” (Focus Features) — Stephen Beresford
“Tender Loving Care” (Bleecker Street) — Mike Leigh
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures) — Martin McDonagh ***
Adapted Screenplay
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Brian K. Vaughan, Denis Villeneuve
“The Invite” (A24) — Rashida Jones and Will McCormack ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo, Alberto Conejero
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — Christopher Nolan
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios) — Drew Goddard
Casting
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Francine Maisler
“Elsinore” (Focus Features) — Jessica Ronane
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Eva Leira and Yolanda Serrano
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — John Papsidera ***
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures) — Sarah Finn
Animated Feature
“Iron Boy” (Sony Pictures Classics) — Louis Clichy, Nicolas de Rosanbo, Fabrice Delville
“Ray Gunn” (Netflix) — Brad Bird and Lisa Beroud (p.g.a.)
“Tangles” (Independent Film Company) — Leah Nelson, Jay Grandin, Jennifer W. Ray, Lauren Miller Rogen and Seth Rogen
“Toy Story 5” (Pixar) — Andrew Stanton, Lindsey Collins and Jessica Choi
“Wildwood” (Laika) — Travis Knight and Sam Wilson ***
Production Design
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)
Cinematography
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)
Costume Design
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Sense and Sensibility” (Focus Features)
“Wuthering Heights” (Warner Bros.)
Film Editing
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“The Invite” (A24)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
“You Can See Everything” (A24)
Makeup and Hairstyling
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol” (Paramount Pictures)
“Michael” (Lionsgate)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)
“Wicker” (Black Bear Pictures)
Sound
“Behemoth!” (Searchlight Pictures)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)
Visual Effects
“Avengers: Doomsday” (Marvel Studios)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Whalefall” (20th Century Studios)
“Wildwood” (Laika)
Original Score
“Disclosure Day” (Universal Pictures) — John Williams
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Hans Zimmer
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Raül Refree
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — Ludwig Göransson
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios) — Daniel Pemberton ***
Original Song
“This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out)” from “The Debut” (A24) ***
“La Nieve” from “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“One Right Here” from “Maserati: The Brothers” (Self-Distributed)
“Let Me Sell You a Dream” from “Musk” (Bleecker Street)
“I Knew It, I Knew You” from “Toy Story 5” (Pixar)
Documentary Feature
“American Doctor” (Watermelon Pictures)
“Naza” (The Guardian, MK2 and Neon)
“Once Upon a Time in Harlem” (Neon) ***
“One in a Million” (Frontline)
“Rehearsals for a Revolution” (Sony Pictures Classics)
International Feature
“Fjord” from Romania (Neon)
“La Bola Negra” from Spain (Netflix) ***
“Minotaur” from France (Mubi)
“Possible Love” from South Korea (Netflix)
“Rose” from Austria (Mubi)
