Wildwood Opens With 100% Fresh Score and No. 1 Animated Feature Odds

Laika's Wildwood enters theaters this weekend carrying a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score — the best in the studio's history — and a 98% probability of a Best Animated Feature nomination, according to Gold Derby's combined odds. The film has already overtaken Toy Story 5 at the top of that category's leaderboard.

The film was 16 years in the making, which makes it the longest stop-motion project ever completed. Studio founder and director Travis Knight has called it an "extraordinary human achievement," and told Gold Derby earlier this week: "I knew we were going to be able to pull it off, but I didn't know how."

Can Wildwood break Laika's losing streak?

Laika holds a perfect 5-for-5 nomination record in Best Animated Feature: Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Missing Link (2019) all landed nods. None won. Wildwood currently sits at No. 1 with that 98% nomination chance and, per Gold Derby, could become the first Laika entry to actually take the statuette.

The bigger question is Best Picture, where the math is unforgiving. Only three animated features have been nominated in the Academy Awards' near-century history:

• Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1992), under the five-nominee system
• Pixar's Up (2010)
• Pixar's Toy Story 3 (2011), both after the field expanded to ten

Wildwood ranks No. 21 in the Best Picture odds — a longshot. A narrow path into the top ten exists, but it requires strong box office and collateral damage among live-action contenders.

Where else does the film rank?

• Original Score — No. 8. Dario Marianelli, an Oscar winner for Atonement and nominee for Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina, reunites with Laika after scoring Kubo. The film is on track for the shortlist.
• Original Song — No. 6. Colin Meloy, the Decemberists frontman who wrote the source novel, contributed the track "The Better Part of Bravery." It hovers just outside the nomination zone.
• Sound — No. 11. Wildwood trails Spider-Man: Brand New Day in these odds.
• Visual Effects — No. 7. This is the only category outside animation where Laika has scored before, via Kubo's 2017 nod. Wildwood sits sandwiched between Avengers: Doomsday and Brand New Day.

Two dark-horse categories round out the map: cinematography and production design. Caleb Deschanel, a six-time Oscar nominee, shot the film — his stop-motion debut and his first feature since Jon Favreau's photorealistic The Lion King remake in 2019. Production designer Nelson Lowry, a Laika in-house veteran, also warrants consideration, per Gold Derby.

The verdict, then: one near-certain nomination, six live longshots, and a composer whose name alone moves odds. That is a broader footprint than any Laika film has managed before.