WILDWOOD Interview: Jacob Tremblay & Animator Tom Carey on Bringing Curtis to Life

We caught up with Jacob Tremblay and LAIKA animator Tom Carey to talk about bringing Curtis to life in WILDWOOD, the highly anticipated stop-motion animated film from the studio behind Coraline. While Tremblay voices Curtis, Carey spent four years animating the character, giving them two very different experiences working on the same film. In this interview, they share what makes WILDWOOD LAIKA’s most ambitious project yet, the incredible attention to detail behind its animation, and why the story’s themes of love, courage and human connection are so important. They also reflect on their personal journeys with the film, from Tremblay recording his lines at just 14 years old to Carey moving from London to Portland for the production, and reveal what going the extra mile means to each of them.

TEM(The Extra Mile): What makes Wildwood different?

Tom : What makes it different? I mean, so much. Just the scale of this film, the amount of characters in the film, the grandeur of the story. It’s nothing like they’ve done in their previous films. This film is 132 minutes long. It’s longer than any project they’ve done before. I think the scale demands attention and respect.The story itself is personal to the studio because it’s based on the city that the studio is in. So it’s very exciting.

Jacob: Just the scale of everything is way bigger.The sets are bigger. The attention to detail is there. Technologically, it’s so much more intricate.  Yeah, they were telling me when I visited the studio for the first time a month ago that Prue’s bike, the one she rides, wouldn’t have been possible to make the way they did 10 years ago because of how intricate it is. So just stuff like that. These things have never been done before.

TEM(The Extra Mile): How did you get invovled in the process Jacob?

Jacob Tremblay: For me, I recorded my part for this five years ago, in 2021, when I was 14. So it’s been a long time. A lot has happened between then and now. When I got asked to be part of a LAIKA project, I was like, absolutely! I grew up watching their films. Coraline is definitely a standout for me. I grew up watching that film, and it really got the gears turning in my brain. Getting to be part of something like that was such a privilege.

TEM: What is one thing you want the audiences to take away from the film?

Tom : The story is a wild, big, no-pun-intended, epic fantasy that, at its core, is a really relatable story about love, courage and bravery. It’s trying to get the audience to think: How far would you go for the one that you love? And it’s saying that in a big, crazy, magical world, rather than being defined by special powers or abilities, you can be defined by the choices you make for those you love. So it’s a really relatable story about human connection at its core, while also being this huge, epic story. You want people to walk away feeling optimistic, inspired and awestruck. That’s the hope.

Jacob : I give a lot of compliments to the artistry here because the way they’re able to evoke so much emotion from these puppets and bring out so much emotion from the audience is honestly marvelous.

TEM: How do you go The Extra Mile?

Tom : If we’re talking about WILDWOOD, I worked on this film for four years. That’s double the length that stop-motion films usually take to make. I moved to Portland, Oregon, from London for this. So quite literally, I moved the extra mile for this project! But also, the endurance that was required to finish a project of this scale took every ounce of energy, power, performance and mental strength to get through it. So that was what the extra mile meant for me.

Jacob : My experience on WILDWOOD was a lot different from his! While he was there for four years, I think I was in the recording studio for about four days, honestly. So going the extra mile was a little different for me. But what I liked about what we did in the studio was that we really made sure to try each scene as many different ways as possible. Different perspectives, different reactions, and just seeing how many different ways we could do the scene.

VVS Films released Wildwood in theatres Oct 23rd, 2026