Wildwood hits the London Film Festival today, and with it, Laika’s most ambitious stop-motion epic yet. The film, a 16-year labour of love from director Travis Knight, premieres under the weight of expectations — not just because it’s his first feature since Kubo and the Two Strings, but because Laika has never missed an Oscar nomination in Best Animated Feature. This time, though, the stakes feel higher. The story is set in Portland, Oregon, Knight’s hometown. And centres on a girl named Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee), whose baby brother Mac is snatched by a murder of crows during a routine walk. She doesn’t go home. She goes into the forbidden forest instead. That’s where the real world ends and the fantastical begins. A land of talking animals, political intrigue, and grief made manifest. And yes, Carey Mulligan voices the villain: the Dowager Governess Alexandra, a woman so broken by loss she weaponises it. Her voice alone, cold, precise, layered with sorrow. Suggests a performance that could carry the film’s emotional core. But this isn’t just a tale of one mother’s absence. It’s about two kids lost in a world built on secrets. Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay) stumbles into Alexandra’s orbit, only to be cast aside when he refuses her warped vision. Prue, meanwhile, finds allies in Angela Bassett’s General, Mahershala Ali’s Brendan, and Awkwafina’s Septima, a rat who might be the heart of the whole thing. The animation? Uncompromising. Six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, working in animation for the first time, gives the film a live-action texture. The camera lingers. It breathes. You see the weight in a character’s eyes, even when they’re made of clay. The film runs 132 minutes. Long enough to build a world, short enough to keep you leaning forward. It opens at AFI Fest later this month, then lands in theatres on October 23, 2026, via distributor Fathom. No Indian release date confirmed yet. But if the buzz holds, it won’t stay off the radar for long.