LAIKA's Wildwood: 231 puppets, 3D-printed armatures and 136 sets mark new production scale

Variety interview (2025) documents production innovations for LAIKA's Wildwood (theatrical release Oct 23 2026). Key facts: 231 practical puppets total; 54 hero characters, each individually engineered and costumed; the eagle character General required approximately 9,000 hand-installed feathers across two dedicated puppets (one for flight, one for performance). 136 locations built, many large enough for crew to walk through — roughly double the set count of Kubo and the Two Strings (2016). Most significantly, 3D printing expanded beyond replacement faces (a LAIKA signature since Coraline, 2009) into armature and skeletal fabrication: printed skeletal forms now allow more realistic musculature, enabling animators to achieve more lifelike tension and performance. Producer Sam Wilson: 'You can see the tension in the characters because these are more human and realistic than anything anybody has ever done.' Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (six-time Oscar nominee) brought battle-sequence expertise. Durable production facts archived to concepts/replacement-animation body this run.