New Star-Studded Fantasy Adaptation Sets All-Time Rotten Tomatoes Score Record

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Published Oct 11, 2026, 2:28 PM EDT

Rianna is the Movie News Editor for ScreenRant. After earning her BA in Film Studies, she began her career as an entertainment writer, contributing to several publications before joining ScreenRant. Her dissertation on the impact of streaming on traditional cinema sharpened her focus on the ever-evolving world of film and media. With 10 years in the industry, Rianna continues to cover the stories she loves while also advocating for awareness and representation of rare disabilities, such as Moebius Syndrome, which she lives with.

Wildwood is setting itself up for potential Oscar success.

LAIKA Studios is a pioneering stop-motion and animation studio founded in 2005 after rebranding from Will Vinton Studios. CEO Travis Knight took the helm following his father and has revolutionized stop-motion with its iconic releases. Every major feature film produced by the studio has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature, including Coraline, ParaNorman, Missing Link, and now a new contender could potentially win that award.

The star-studded return from LAIKA Studios is getting a superb critical reception, as Wildwood debuts with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 100% based on 14 reviews. This marks a huge milestone for the studio, as it's the highest-rated movie since Kubo and the Two Strings. Travis Knight returned to direct the star-studded adaptation with Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Jacob Tremblay, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Awkwafina, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Richard E. Grant, and Amandla Stenberg.

Reviews for the new animated feature Wildwood state, "Laika has made many visually striking movies in their nearly two-decade career, but Wildwood soars above them all with some of the most breathtaking sequences of the year," and "Wildwood is Laika’s magnum opus; a cinematic achievement that we won’t soon see the likes of again. The love and ingenuity on display throughout the writing, directing, art, music and technical work is immense."

ScreenRant's Liz Declan shared her review which said, "Wildwood is at once beautiful and horrifying, heartwarming and gut-wrenching, hopeful and crushing," and "If Laika set out to prove that it is still worthy of its reputation as one of the best animation studios today, Wildwood has more than accomplished that..."

The animated film destined for the Oscars, titled Wildwood, is based on a bestselling fantasy novel of the same name released in 2011 by Colin Meloy and illustrated by Carson Ellis. It is a trilogy and follows 12-year-old Prue McKeel who enters the forbidden Impassable Wilderness to rescue her baby brother, Mac, after he's abducted by a murder of crows.

LAIKA and Knight's adaptation of Wildwood took 16 years to create, with actual production taking place across 5 to 6 years. ScreenRant's Tatiana Hullender visited LAIKA Studios just outside Portland, Oregon, ahead of Wildwood's release, where Brad Schiff, who oversees the animation, shared that "Missing Link had 1800 shots in the film. This one had 2,900, and 900 of them were a second or less. It's shot and edited like a live-action film, but it takes just as long to set up a 12-frame shot as it does a 120-frame shot, except the animator will finish it in two days. It's just a lot of setup time."

Wildwood may finally give LAIKA Studios their well-deserved accolades, as an Oscar win doesn't seem farfetched for the stunning feature. The movie will arrive in theaters on October 23.