Last weekend, I dragged my friends to our local AMC with one mission: to watch Wildwood (2026), Laika Studios’ newest animated release. For two hours, we explored the magic of Oregon’s forests and delved deep into the world of talking wolves and bandit kingdoms; all of which painstakingly created entirely through stop-motion animation. Stop-motion is one of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive filmmaking techniques, requiring thousands of frames being moved a millisecond at a time.

This is what makes Laika’s Wildwood so remarkable; it represents a continued investment in a nontraditional art form. The movie itself took 16 years to create since it was first conceived in 2008, with a budget of $100 million and a team of over a thousand animators. But there is another story behind the movie, and it is considerably less magical.

Laika Studios was founded with the backing of Phil Knight, the billionaire co-founder of Nike, with his son Travis Knight now leading the studio. His financial backing has allowed Laika to create films without the need for commercialization, which is why almost all of Laika’s films have been unsuccessful at the box office. Through this, we see that an art form requiring collective human creativity to exist is dependent on the financial resources of a remarkably small number of people to survive.

Phil Knight’s wealth has helped sustain a studio that continues to invest in original, handcrafted animation. This is not an argument against his support, the truth is that it is difficult to imagine Laika undertaking projects like Wildwood without substantial financial backing from wealthy patrons. However, the problem is the dependency itself. The current cultural environment is one in which the survival of certain artistic practices depend on the interests of people who possess extraordinary amounts of private wealth. In this sense, Laika serves as a product of a system where patronage is a substitute for infrastructure that keeps art alive.

The consequences of this dependency extend far beyond stop-motion animation. It represents a soulless, capitalistic industry where art is measured against commercial viability. When the primary goal is to make money, studios are incentivized to invest in established franchises and productions with predictable returns. Original projects, especially ones that don’t guarantee commercial success, are impossible to justify under a system that treats profit as its end goal. We’ve normalized a system where institutions responsible for distribution prioritize monetization rather than assuming their actual role as cultural facilitators. This is only furthered with the consolidation of entertainment companies, as fewer institutions have the willingness to sustain projects outside of commercial priorities.

This is a two-sided issue: as audiences, we are living in an entertainment landscape that is increasingly defined by convenience and immediate gratification. The vast majority of consumers tend to gravitate towards recognizable characters and established franchises, which require little investment beyond the decision to watch them. However, this is a subtle form of anti-intellectualism: not necessarily an outright rejection of art, but a lack of willingness to engage with unfamiliar forms of expression.

The irony is that we have more access to entertainment than ever before, yet less artistic curiosity. In doing so, we mistake the abundance of media for the abundance of art. We consume endless streams of content that replay the same narratives and prioritize the commercial appeal over experimentation. A major reason why Wildwood wasn’t commercially successful was because audiences aren’t willing to engage with unfamiliar content. As consumers, we must make an effort to watch unfamiliar films and think critically about them. And the best way to do so is to start with a recent release, like Wildwood.