Wildwood Budget Might Be a Whopping $400M+ — Could It Be the Costliest Animated Film Ever?

So, that $100 million price tag for Travis Knight’s ‘Wildwood’? Forget it. That number came from just one place: a random line in a Variety article, and nobody really checked it. But now, sources are saying it’s way off base. We’re talking maybe four times that much — $400 million or more. It sounds crazy, but when you look at how long this thing took, it might actually be true. The production dragged on for over six years, and even the cinematographer, Caleb Deschanel, was on set for three full years. That’s not a movie shoot; that’s like moving in for a while. Stop-motion is always slow going, but this is next level. Knight, who’s also the CEO of Laika and has some serious backing from his dad Phil Knight (net worth around $36 billion), really went all in on this passion project. The film got great reviews and might be an Oscar front-runner, but with an opening weekend expected to be around $9 million, the losses could be unlike anything we’ve seen before.