‘Wildwood’ Gets PG-13 Rating as LAIKA’s 140-Minute Stop-Motion Epic Targets Older Audiences

Something special is brewing when it comes to Travis Knight’s “Wildwood,” which clocks in at 140 minutes — tying the record for the longest English-language animated film.

Now, it’s been confirmed that Knight’s animated epic will be rated PG-13, which is somewhat unusual for an animated movie and suggests that the film is being made with an older audience in mind. The rating could also limit the film’s reach, particularly among younger children, placing a commercial ceiling on it and signaling that this is not a traditionally family-oriented animated film.

The exact details of the MPA’s rating for “Wildwood” are as follows: Rated PG-13 for “strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide related material, brief partial nudity and language.”

“Wildwood” is the latest from LAIKA, following “Coraline,” “ParaNorman,” “The Boxtrolls,” “Missing Link,” and “Kubo and the Two Strings,” the latter of which Knight directed. There’s a distinctive stop-motion animation style to these films, often featuring darkly imagined fantasy worlds.

Knight — who also directed the well-received “Transformers” movie “Bumblebee” — is working with a script written by Chris Butler (“ParaNorman”). The film is adapted from the “Wildwood” books by Colin Meloy. The story centers on Prue McKeel, a teenager whose infant brother is kidnapped by a flock of crows, drawing her into the Impassable Wilderness — an enchanted forest hidden, as it turns out, on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon.

That record-tying 140-minute runtime is another indicator of an animated film that seems to be straying from the typical kiddie audience with shorter attention spans. LAIKA has described the film as an expansive handcrafted adventure, with earlier reports highlighting the project’s ambitious scale, including hundreds of sets and nearly 250 practical puppets.

“Wildwood” hits theaters nationwide on October 23, 2026.