LAIKA Movies: A Guide to the Studio Behind Wildwood

Wildwood, LAIKA's next feature, reaches US theaters on October 23, 2026.

Founded in Oregon in 2005, LAIKA makes stop-motion animation. Artists move physical puppets in tiny increments, photographing each pose to create the illusion of movement.

ParaNorman took nearly two years of production across 52 stages. LAIKA also uses digital effects to extend its physical sets and puppet performances.

The Other Mother offers Coraline everything her distracted parents seem unable to provide. After a move to a dreary new home, attentive adults and better meals are tempting. The buttons in place of their eyes suggest a price she has not yet understood.

Henry Selick makes familiar bedrooms and dining tables threatening by changing who occupies them. Even the tunnel between the two homes looks cramped enough to make exploring it uncomfortable. The film adapts Neil Gaiman's Coraline novel, illustrated by Dave McKean.

Also on Blu-ray: Coraline — LAIKA Studios Edition.

Norman can talk to ghosts. In Blithe Hollow, his ease with the dead makes him an outsider among the living, including classmates and relatives who struggle to believe him.

When a curse threatens the town, the boy everyone dismisses knows more than the adults panicking around him. Directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell use the atmosphere of a zombie movie to explore how fear turns into cruelty. Butler developed the story as an original screenplay.

Cheesebridge is a town where cheese and hats carry an absurd amount of social importance. Beneath it, the Boxtrolls salvage junk and wear cardboard boxes whose labels become their names. Eggs, the human boy they have raised, ventures above ground to find that his neighbors think his family are monsters.

The respectable citizens obsess over invitations while the feared creatures get on with making things. Down in the workshops, the Boxtrolls communicate through noises and gestures, giving the comedy a rhythm quite different from the town's pompous conversations.

Alan Snow's Here Be Monsters! inspired the film, but its young protagonist is Arthur, not Eggs. The novel explores a wider community of creatures and inventors.

Blu-ray edition: The Boxtrolls — LAIKA Studios Edition.

The giant skeleton in Kubo and the Two Strings was a physical puppet standing 16 feet tall, with arms operated on rigs suspended from the ceiling.

Kubo begins with much smaller figures: he plays a shamisen that magically animates paper characters for his storytelling performances. His quest with Monkey and Beetle sends him searching for his father's armor and answers about his family.

In Travis Knight's adventure, the stories Kubo performs become entangled with a family history he only partly understands.

Mr. Link is an inconvenient discovery for Sir Lionel Frost: he can speak for himself. Frost wants recognition for finding a legendary creature. His discovery wants help finding relatives who might understand him.

Chris Butler sends the pair toward the Himalayas with Adelina Fortnight. Mr. Link's polite, literal-minded responses keep puncturing Frost's grand ideas about the expedition.

Wildwood adapts Colin Meloy's novel, illustrated by Carson Ellis, set in a forbidden forest beyond Portland.

When crows carry off Prue McKeel's baby brother, she and her classmate Curtis enter the forest to find him. Talking animals and dangerous inhabitants stand between them and the rescue.

Travis Knight directs, with Chris Butler writing the screenplay.

The Wildwood Chronicles 3-Book Box Set contains the original novel plus Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium.