{"id":667271,"date":"2026-10-27T23:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T23:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/667271\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T23:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T23:30:12","slug":"laikas-wildwood-comes-in-third-nationally-but-sells-out-in-portland-indie-theaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/667271\/","title":{"rendered":"Laika\u2019s \u2018Wildwood\u2019 Comes in Third Nationally but Sells Out in Portland Indie Theaters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laika\u2019s new animated film Wildwood came in third at the box office opening weekend, bringing in an estimated $11.6 million from 2,942 theater locations Oct. 23\u201325. That\u2019s behind Nathan Fielder\u2019s three-hour Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything ($19.5 million) and the body horror film Clayface, the top earner with $24 million, according to BoxOfficeReport.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The story was pretty different on the ground in independent theaters in Portland, though. Filmgoers flocked to screens to see Wildwood after its intense local marketing blitz (\u201cWild for Wildwood<\/a>,\u201d WW, Oct. 20) in support of the homegrown project by Hillsboro\u2019s Laika Studios and based on a 2011 YA fantasy book by local author Colin Meloy and illustrator Carson Ellis. <\/p>\n

Laika Studios has not revealed its Wildwood budget, but one of its handcrafted, stop-motion animation films likely runs $60 million to $100 million, according to Forbes. The film was directed by Travis Knight, president and CEO of Laika and the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight. <\/p>\n

Wildwood is Laika\u2019s first PG-13 film. It opens with a character\u2019s suicide attempt and features intense puppet-on-puppet violence in battle scenes between warring factions in the Impassable Wilderness. As a somewhat unusual PG-13 animated film, the $11.6 million is actually a win: The film performed better than the $6 million to $10 million box office haul that analysts had forecast<\/a>, according to the Los Angeles Times. <\/p>\n

Still, the $11.6 million number doesn\u2019t quite match the cultural hype around the film locally, which includes a public art trail of Wildwood crows and product tie-ins at Voodoo Doughnut and Stumptown Coffee. <\/p>\n

The Hollywood Theatre is showing the film in both 35 mm and digital formats and was sold out all weekend, according to a spokeswoman. (Every screening in both formats is sold out through Nov. 1.) The theater also hosted a special event with Meloy and Ellis in attendance. <\/p>\n

Southeast Portland\u2019s Moreland Theater also had solid attendance all weekend and sold out an Oct. 25 screening that featured a Q&A afterward with three Laika artists. Ticket sales hovered around 200 per showing all weekend for the 268-seat auditorium. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the busiest we\u2019ve been in a long, long time,\u201d says Moreland Theater manager Patrick Schranck. \u201cIt\u2019s really connecting with people.\u201d <\/p>\n

Screenings at the historic theater have included lots of clapping, laughing and cheering at all of the local references, especially during a sequence early in the film in which the character Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) rides her bike through the city. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have had very strong reactions, overwhelmingly positive,\u201d Schranck says.<\/p>\n

The same can be said for the nation\u2019s film critics: Wildwood has a 99% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Schranck hopes the rest of the country\u2019s filmgoers catch up to Portland audiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do wish it would have done better nationally, but it has done very well here in Portland,\u201d he says. \u201cI hope that national audiences appreciate the craftsmanship and the wonderful storytelling, and that more people see it over time. Because it really is a special film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willamette Week\u2019s reporting has real-life impact that changes laws, forces action by civic leaders, and drives compromised politicians from public office. <\/p>\n

Help us dig deeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laika\u2019s new animated film Wildwood came in third at the box office opening weekend, bringing in an estimated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-667271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}