Travis Knight Unveils First Wildwood Footage at Annecy

first Wildwood – Laika director Travis Knight debuted the first shared footage from “Wildwood” at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, offering a glimpse of Prue’s world in Portland, Mac’s abduction by crows, and a second clip that introduces Curtis and Proxima. K

When the first clip from Laika’s “Wildwood” finally made its way to an outside audience, director Travis Knight admitted he was nervous.

The movie may be set in Laika’s home base of Portland, Oregon, but the timing of its debut landed far from the studio. Last week, the first footage from “Wildwood” was screened at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France—its first public look beyond the film’s marvelous trailer.

Knight and CEO and president of Laika shared the sequence, and the nerves didn’t last. The opening introduced Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and her family—her parents voiced by Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine—and quickly set the rules that will matter later: Prue has a baby brother named Mac. and her father warns her he’s not allowed to go outside. Of course, she agrees—and then promptly takes Mac outside.

The Portland details begin to pop immediately. In the clip, Prue takes her brother through the city, including a moment that delighted the Annecy crowd: the Unipiper, a real guy who rides around on a unicycle dressed as Darth Vader and playing a bagpipe.

The sequence doesn’t stay gentle for long. At a playground. Prue meets up with her friend Curtis (Jacob Tremblay). and then a flock of crows—“a murder!”—descends. Young Mac is abducted and carried into the unknown. a setup that tees up the story’s fantasy turn: a human character is spirited away to another realm. and the human heroine has to follow.

Those beats echo the feeling of classic fairy tales. and the film’s creative DNA goes deeper than the screens in Annecy. “Wildwood. ” based on the book by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis. drew comparisons to Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth” in the way it begins. Knight said he reached out to Meloy and Ellis even before the book had been published about turning it into an animated film—“That was 16 years ago. ” he said.

After the first clip, Knight leaned into the craftsmanship behind the magic. He joked, “We’re not Amish,” when discussing Laika using computer animation to augment stop-motion. He described the process as a mixture of “art, craft and technology” and “a combination of different disciplines.”

The footage itself made the workflow visible. At times, puppets are animated against green screens and composited into photography of the built sets. Other times, characters are computer-generated within those built sets. And sometimes, it’s pure stop-motion—using computers mainly for removing rods or painting out bits of machinery.

That “every part of the shot matters” approach came up again in the second clip. Curtis is shown being interrogated by warriors from the other realm beyond the Impassable Wilderness. They ask him if he’s a warrior. and he fumbles before being introduced to Proxima. “a talking rat voiced by Awkwafina.” The moment plays as character animation at its most specific: Proxima does backstrokes in Curtis’ soup.

Knight expanded on the idea after the clip ran. explaining that at Laika. animators aren’t limited to the characters alone. Unlike in traditional animation. animators animate everything in the shot—characters and everything around them. including other characters that enter the frame. “It’s all up to the animator,” Knight said.

The presentation also touched the production learning curve for the film’s cinematography. Caleb Deschanel—Oscar-winning and legendary—handled the cinematography for “Wildwood,” and Knight said Deschanel asked, “What if we shoot this outside?” Knight told him shooting outside was not an option.

For the third and final clip. Knight brought out one of “Wildwood’s” biggest technological and artistic feats: the General. a giant golden eagle voiced in the presentation by Angela Bassett. The puppet is huge, with hundreds of individually crafted feathers that have to be manipulated by hand. The eagle also “breathes,” thanks to a new technology that raises and lowers the stop-motion characters’ chests.

Knight said the clip was from about halfway through the movie. Prue flies on the back of the eagle as she and the General have a conversation, and Prue is being brought to Wildwood residents the General believes can help—residents who will be around a mythic tree.

The dialogue landed with a punch of personality. When Prue asks, “They talk to a tree?” the answer is, “Yes.” Prue follows with, “Hippies,” sneering.

Danger, of course, is never far behind. The crows are on the General’s tail, setting up what the presentation made clear: doom could be close for her and Prue.

Between the Portland introduction. Mac’s abduction. Curtis’ interrogation. Proxima’s backstroke scene. and the giant eagle sequence. the Annecy debut gave just enough to feel the film’s direction without handing over the story. “Wildwood” is shaping up as a different kind of fairy tale—one meant for kids in 2026. where danger lurks around every corner. and growing up could leave you more vulnerable to both earthly and ethereal threats.

Travis Knight Wildwood Laika Annecy International Animation Film Festival stop-motion Portland Prue Peyton Elizabeth Lee Jake Johnson Maya Erskine Jacob Tremblay Proxima Awkwafina Angela Bassett Caleb Deschanel General Unipiper Jim Henson Labyrinth Impassable Wilderness golden eagle