Wildwood: Laika's stop-motion film debuts third, ties its best CinemaScore

Wildwood, the stop-motion fantasy from the American animation studio Laika, opened at number three at the North American box office over the weekend of October 23 to 25, 2026, with an estimated $11.6 million from about 2,582 locations. It is Laika's first feature since 2019, and audiences polled on opening night gave it an A CinemaScore, which reports say ties the studio's best audience grade, held until now by Kubo and the Two Strings. The opening came in a little below Kubo's $12.6 million debut in 2016, while the film is reported to have cost about $100 million.

Wildwood is one of the most closely watched animation releases of the year because of who made it and how it was released. Laika, based in Oregon, makes films the slow way: puppets and sets are built by hand and moved a fraction at a time, one frame after another. Stop-motion is the technique in which a physical model is photographed, adjusted slightly and photographed again, so that the frames played in sequence create movement. A single feature can take years. Laika's earlier films, including Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings, won critical praise and award nominations, but most did not earn back their costs in cinemas.

The release route was unusual. Rather than going out through one of the big Hollywood studios, Wildwood was handed to Fathom Entertainment, a company best known for event screenings and for re-releasing older films, including Laika's own Coraline. Knight chose Fathom partly to guarantee the film a full theatrical release. A smaller distributor means fewer screens and a smaller marketing push than a major studio would offer, so an opening in the low teens of millions is being read by the trade press as a respectable start rather than a breakout.

The money question remains. With a reported $100 million budget, an $11.6 million opening is not enough on its own. Industry analysts have pointed out that, apart from Coraline in 2009, Laika's films have not turned a profit in cinemas, and some expect Wildwood to follow that pattern. Its path to recovering costs therefore depends on a long run powered by word of mouth, overseas sales handled by FilmNation Entertainment, and later earnings from streaming and home video.

That is why the A CinemaScore matters. CinemaScore surveys audiences as they leave on opening night, and an A grade usually signals the kind of recommendations that help family films hold up over several weekends. Critics have also been warm, with the film carrying a very high approval score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Wildwood: weekend of October 23 to 25, 2026 (estimates) Film | Position | Weekend gross Clayface | 1 | $24 million You Can See Everything | 2 | $19.5 million Wildwood | 3 | about $11.6 million

Short-term: The next two weekends, including Halloween, will show whether strong audience scores can keep Wildwood in cinemas against new releases. The overall North American weekend total was reported up about 22% on the same weekend of 2025, which helps all films on the chart.

Long-term: The result will shape how independent animation studios release expensive, hand-crafted films. If Wildwood holds well, other makers may see a specialty distributor as a workable alternative to the major studios; if it fades, it will reinforce the view that stop-motion features struggle to pay for themselves in cinemas.

Who is affected: Laika and its 16-year project; Fathom Entertainment, which is taking on its biggest new release; FilmNation, which sells the film abroad; and family audiences worldwide, including in India, where animated features from Hollywood studios have a steady following. No Indian release date had been announced in the reports reviewed.

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