John Malkovich is well aware of his current awards momentum, even if the “onslaught” of attention doesn’t quite suit his “native personality.”

The U.S. star has hit the festival circuit with Martin McDonagh’s tragicomedy Wild Horse Nine, his performance in which is being hailed as potentially the best of his career and almost certainly an Oscar nomination lock. It isn’t the first Academy Award nod he’ll have earned — he’s been recognized before in 1985 and 1994 for Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, respectively — but at a BFI London Film Festival talk on Sunday afternoon, the actor conceded the awards campaign is an entirely different beast in 2026.

“[I feel] probably different [about awards consideration] than I did [when In the Line of Fire came out] because the movie business existed [and] it maintained, undeservedly in my opinion, a very high position in the culture. And when I say undeserved, [I] mean there weren’t that many Chinatowns or Godfathers or Godfather IIs,” he began. “Now, [the awards trail] is the only way to get people to go to the theaters, the whole thing, and that’s months and months and months.”

He recalled being nominated for Places in the Heart and going to his first and only Oscars in 1985. He was in the car and asked his “a little bit bossy” manager, Phyllis, if he could go in through a side door. “‘Honey, it’s the Oscars,’” she clicked in his face. “There is no side door!” The entire room of attendees burst into laughter at Malkovich’s story. “So that’s my native personality in the face of that onslaught,” he said about embarking on another campaign for Wild Horse Nine. “But also, I’m a grown-up. It’s a part of the business now.”

He remembered that his early films made their money even before the big Oscar night. “Now, [winning an Oscar] seems to be the only way you get people to actually go to a theater.” When asked if it broke his heart after Malkovich admitted he’s unsure his daughter would consider going to the theater these days, Malkovich simply said: “No, because I’m 72 years old. Things change. I don’t really like thinking, ‘Things aren’t what they used to be.’ They just change, and you either change with them or die. And I prefer to change with them.”

Wild Horse Nine stars Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as Chris and Lee, longtime CIA partners stationed in Santiago, Chile who are dispatched to Easter Island by their bureau chief (Steve Buscemi). Against the surreal backdrop of the island’s monumental Moai statues, the pair begin reckoning with their murky shared past. At the same time, Chris forms an unexpected bond with two rebellious Chilean students, played by Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas — an encounter that threatens to unravel the agents’ friendship and the conspiracy in which they have become entangled.

The BFI London Film Festival premiere of the film took place on Friday night, where Malkovich, Rockwell and McDonagh made an appearance at the glitzy red carpet event.

Naturally, Malkovich was asked about a running theme in many of his movies — the Kennedy assassination — particularly because his character in Wild Horse Nine is implied to have played a major part in the death of the former U.S. President. When asked about his personal opinion on the matter, the actor replied: “I know what didn’t happen is what they said happened.”

Malkovich described McDonagh as a “great writer” and a “direct, kind” filmmaker. “He can give great notes,” he continued. “He told me about one of the scenes with big heads… He just came over and said, ‘More David Attenborough,’ which I just thought was one of the greatest notes, and which I didn’t do very well.”

He likened his co-star Rockwell to “a trainer at SeaWorld feeding fish to a shark.” Confused chuckles from the audience had Malkovich explaining: “If you watch him 20 times, you get a good idea of how good he is at that… He’s such a great colleague, such a wonderful actor, and so fantastic in this, everything he does is perfect, and he can go any which way at any second.”

Malkovich confessed he is “not a political person,” but said Wild Horse Nine is wildly existential and evocative when it comes to themes of grief and mortality.

He covered the milestones of a vast and vibrant career across Sunday’s session, from Dangerous Liaisons and working with Clint Eastwood to the West End and how he came to star in 1999’s Being John Malkovich, a set on which Malkovich admitted to “having a moment” and “being an asshole” when filming on a particularly hot day. He even discussed a little of his ancestry — Malkovich recently discovered he is 43 percent Romanian — and the rarity of reading a genuinely brilliant script.

“It’s so rare to read a great screenplay and make a really excellent film. And you can work as hard as you like. You can give a really interesting performance, and if the film isn’t very good, it’s absolutely meaningless,” said Malkovich. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s totally waste of your time in the public.”

To end, Malkovich was probed on his film set to be released next century, 100 Years, from director Robert Rodriguez. To his knowledge, the movie currently sits behind bulletproof glass in a vault and will open in the year 2115. “I have tickets,” the actor joked. “I don’t think I’ll be at the opening night. You know, my grandchildren won’t even be here as well.”

The 70th BFI London Film Festival runs Oct. 7-18.

Laika, the Oregon animation house that specializes in stop motion, has a perfect track record of landing Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations for all four of its first films: Coraline, ParaNorman, Missing Link, and Kubo and the Two Strings. With its latest and unquestionably most ambitious project Wildwood, the streak could well continue. This film has been gestating at Laika for 16 years, finally starting production in 2021, and now having its world premiere today at the London Film Festival. It is also slated to open AFI Fest later this month for its North American premiere in Hollywood.

For director-producer Travis Knight, who is also CEO of Laika, this adaptation of Colin Meloy’s book has been a personal dream, especially since the setting of the book, and now the film, is right in his hometown of Portland, OR. How could he resist? A sweeping fantasy right in your own backyard featuring a magical forbidden forest of talking animals mixed with humans? It all becomes the center of a truly epic story that feels born to be on the big screen. The painstaking stop-motion animation process applied to a tale on a scale rarely seen on this level is a visual knockout, and the story is a compelling one focused on a scrappy young heroine determined to fight back and save her baby brother after he is harrowingly abducted from the streets of Portland by a murder of crows.

Prue McKeel (nicely voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a loyal and loving teen girl who promises her parents she will take good care of her baby brother Mac on a normal sunny day outing. It turns out to be a frightening one when Mac is snatched up by a menacing swarm of black crows who swoop down in unison from the sky and fly away with him. Her frantic efforts to catch up fail and she sees the birds disappear into the adjoining forbidden forest known to allow no outsiders. Unable to go back home and explain to her parents (Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson), she sets off to find Mac and bring him back. No easy task, but her rather awkward and far less adventurous classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay) offers any help he can supply, which isn’t much. Still, he sets out to follow her into the forest where after an encounter with the imposing uniformed coyotes who patrol the place gets separated from Prue.

Soon both are swept up, on individual tracks into this world like something out of Lewis Carroll, as they go down the rabbit hole into a society like no other — a land of talking animals, bandits, wise owls, even a loyal rat and more. For Curtis it is meeting the evil Dowager Governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) who attempts to bring him into her fold. She is a woman devastated by the death of her only son, so much so she can’t function and turns her grief into no good, with the coyote force in lockstep for her dark ambitions. When Curtis sees what she is up to he refuses and is tossed into a prison with other rejects.

Meanwhile, Prue, meeting The General (Angela Bassett), the wise Great Eagle leader of the Avian Principality, as well as Brendan, the empathetic leader of the outcast Bandits, uses every intuition she has to navigate this dense landscape. Eventually all roads lead her to Alexandra, who lies to her. She encourages her to go home to her parents, saying it is better for a grieving mother to know the truth of what happened to her child. Prue follows the advice, confesses what happened to Mac, and discovers the secret her parents have been keeping from her all along.

There is much more to come in this two-hour-plus adaptation including a battle royale that will see Prue returning for a massive fight to the finish, still hoping to navigate a happy ending.

With six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Black Stallion) working for the first time on an animated film, the visual palette based in part on the book’s gorgeous illustrations by Caron Ellis is breathtaking. Deschanel makes the stop-motion process feel like live action, the camera picking up character heartache and triumph in ways I haven’t quite seen before in this form. Knight is a born storyteller so the emphasis is always on that, and even though the visuals are quite awesome in their own right, they never overwhelm. Character development is key here, as it was in the book, and each is fully fleshed out. Among them is Bassett’s commanding eagle, the General; Brendan (powerfully voiced by Mahershala Ali), leader of the Bandits; Maksim (Tom Waits), loyal coyote foot soldier to the Dowager Governess; regal Iphigenia (Tantoo Cardinal); bumbling coyote Dmitri (Charlie Day); reclusive aging owl Rex (Richard E. Grant); and Septima, a little rat who rises to the occasion and will break your heart (wonderfully voiced by Awkwafina).

There can be no doubt Meloy created this sweeping story in the tradition of other epics like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, and though Wildwood isn’t quite up on that mountain it ably marches to its own drummer, a story of grief, courage, determination and triumph, and yet another Laika stop-motion gem that stays in the heart.

Producers are Knight and Sam Wilson.

Title: Wildwood
Festival: London
Distributor: Fathom
Release date: October 23, 2026
Director: Travis Knight
Screenwriter: Chris Butler
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Maya Erskine, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Tom Waits, Richard E. Grant, Amanda Stenberg, Tantoo Cardinal, Len Cariou, Marc Evan Jackson
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 2 hr 12 mins

“I don’t know whether this is terrifying or adorable,” the central character in Laika’s new stop-motion animation film observes at one point. The answer is both, with Wildwood representing a staggering achievement from the company that has given us such superb efforts as Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings. This breathtaking fantasy adventure runs 132 minutes, setting a record as the longest stop-motion movie, but it manages to be enthralling from first moment to last.

Based on Colin Meloy’s 2011 bestselling fantasy novel of the same name featuring illustrations by Carson Ellis, the expansive storyline revolves around teenage girl Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), who lives in the Portland, Oregon, area with her loving parents (Jake Johnson, Maya Erskine) and baby brother Mac (Arthur Knight). Despite her folks’ strict instructions that Mac not leave the house, Prue takes advantage of their temporary absence to take him on a joy ride through Portland, winding up in a playground where he is suddenly abducted by a murder of crows in a scene that proves just as frightening as anything in Hitchcock’s The Birds (the film deserves its PG-13 rating).

Accompanied by her nerdy friend Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), who clearly has a crush on her, Prue desperately pursues the birds into the mysterious Impassible Wilderness located nearby and inhabited by talking animals, including coyotes in red military uniforms. They’re in the service of the dowager governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), who once ruled the kingdom but has become unhinged with grief after the accidental death of her 12-year-old son. We eventually learn that she has orchestrated Mac’s kidnapping as part of a nefarious pact involving black magic.

Trying to find her brother, Prue — aided by Curtis, who reveals previously unseen pluck and ingenuity — encounters a variety of colorful animal and human characters as both friends and foes. They include, among others, the General (Angela Bassett), the giant eagle leader of the Avian Principality; Brendan the Bandit King (Mahershala Ali), who becomes a strong ally; Septima (Awkwafina), a brave rat with whom Curtis forms a tight connection; and Iphigenia (Tantoo Cardinal), a wise, elderly sage who acts as a sort of Yoda stand-in for the story.

The narrative and visual imagination on display is truly stunning, but they’re overshadowed by the genuine feeling in the screenplay crafted by director and Laika CEO Travis Knight and writer Chris Butler (ParaNorman, Missing Link). Alexandra is far from a cartoon villain, her motivation stemming from the traumatic loss of a son whom she vainly tried to replace with a mechanical replica. The tender family bonds between Prue and her parents and infant brother provide beautiful grace notes, as does Prue’s growing respect and affection for her classmate Curtis, whom she once considered a “loser.”

There’s plenty of humor as well, stemming from the colorful characters and situations. At one point Prue finds herself meeting with Owl Rex (a delightful Richard E. Grant), a leader in the Avian Principality, in her efforts to find her brother. She tells him that she doesn’t believe in magic.

“And here you are, talking to an owl in a waistcoat,” he tartly observes.

And, of course, action abounds, culminating in an elaborate climactic battle sequence in which Alexandra’s coyote forces are commanded by the rabidly loyal Maksim, memorably voiced by Tom Waits.

With Caleb Deschanel behind the camera (it’s the six-time Oscar nominated cinematographer’s stop-motion debut, although he previously shot Jon Favreau’s photorealistic animated remake of The Lion King), Wildwood looks gorgeous throughout. But what’s truly astonishing is the sheer scope of the effort involved in the gargantuan stop-motion production that involved some 200 practical puppets and 130 practical sets to bring the elaborate story to life. Not to mention how the puppet characters, both animal and human, feel so thoroughly lifelike throughout, completely involving us in the emotion-packed storyline.

Much credit should also go to the voice performers — who also include such notable actors as Amandla Stenberg, Blythe Danner, Rob Delaney and Jemaine Clement — who give varied, complex performances rather than merely delivering the jokey asides permeating so many animated films.

Laika’s most ambitious effort to date, Wildwood may also be the company’s masterpiece.