Wildwood has secured a prominent final stop before reaching theaters.

The American Film Institute has selected LAIKA's sixth feature as the Opening Night film for AFI Fest 2026. Its US premiere takes place Wednesday, October 21 at the TCL Chinese Theatres.

The public theatrical release follows on October 23.

Sixteen years is the real production story

In announcing the premiere, Travis Knight framed Wildwood as something larger than a normal multi-year animation production.

He said the story has been with the filmmakers for sixteen years and described hundreds of artists and craftspeople slowly building the world by hand.

LAIKA publicly announced the adaptation in 2021, but Knight's comments make clear that the studio's relationship with Colin Meloy's fantasy began much earlier.

The forbidden forest begins just outside Portland

Peyton Elizabeth Lee voices Prue McKeel, a headstrong teenager whose baby brother is abducted by a murder of crows.

The rescue takes her beyond Portland and into the Impassable Wilderness, an enchanted forest she was never supposed to enter or even know existed.

Jacob Tremblay voices Curtis Mehlberg, the awkward classmate who follows her inside.

What begins as a rescue expands into a conflict involving talking animals, bandits and competing powers whose ambitions threaten the balance of the forest itself.

LAIKA built a voice cast almost as large as its world

Lee and Tremblay lead an ensemble that includes Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Tom Waits and Richard E. Grant.

Chris Butler wrote the screenplay.

His connection to LAIKA runs through much of the studio's history: he co-directed and wrote ParaNorman, wrote Kubo and the Two Strings and directed Missing Link.

Veteran cinematographer Caleb Deschanel is credited with the film's cinematography, bringing decades of live-action experience into a production photographed frame by frame.

This is LAIKA's first feature in seven years

The studio's previous movie, Missing Link, arrived in 2019.

That seven-year gap makes Wildwood LAIKA's long-awaited return to theatrical feature animation rather than simply its next annual release.

The studio occupies an unusual space in modern animation. Digital tools are deeply embedded in its process, but physical puppets, constructed sets and incremental hand animation remain visible at the center of the finished image.

Wildwood appears designed to test how far that process can scale.

At 139 minutes, LAIKA is thinking in epic proportions

The announced runtime is two hours and nineteen minutes.

That is unusually long for an animated feature and especially striking for stop motion, where even brief sequences can require enormous amounts of physical labor.

The scale fits LAIKA's description of Wildwood as an epic rather than a compact fairy tale.

Prue is not simply traveling through a collection of fantasy locations. The film is presenting the forest as a functioning realm with factions, histories and competing visions of its future.

Opening AFI Fest gives the film a prestige launch

The October 21 screening opens the 40th edition of AFI Fest, which runs through October 25 in Hollywood.

AFI's choice places Wildwood in the festival's most visible slot and gives an American stop-motion feature the same red-carpet position traditionally occupied by major live-action awards titles.

The full festival lineup will be announced September 29.

Wildwood already has the opening-night spotlight.

Then comes the harder part

Two days after its US premiere, Wildwood moves from a festival audience to theaters through Fathom Entertainment.

That is where sixteen years of development and years of physical production finally encounter a mass audience.

LAIKA has spent most of the decade away from feature-film screens.

It is returning with its longest and apparently most expansive movie.

The forest has taken sixteen years to build. On October 23, audiences finally get to walk into it.