Travis Knight recounts the uphill battles to produce the 2009 stop-motion film and his newest epic, Wildwood

What was the last thing you did that took 16 years to accomplish? No shame — but director Travis Knight has a different level of persistence than most of us.

It took Knight and his stop-motion animation studio Laika nearly two decades to bring Wildwood, their latest film, to life. Even then, the studio behind Coraline wasn't entirely prepared for the challenges of its most ambitious movie yet. Knight (who yes, also directed an entire He-Man movie over the course of this journey) says the dark fantasy pushed his team to invent new technologies, rethink old techniques, and take the kinds of risks Hollywood studios tend to avoid.

Polygon spoke with Knight about the long road to Wildwood, the film's surprisingly complicated animated feats, and why he took a unique road to theaters despite years of working with the major studios.

WIldwood is a marvelous film, which took a long time to come together. You acquired the rights in 2010 — what were the bumps in the road?

Sixteen years! Coraline came out in 2009, and at the time it represented a pretty significant seismic shift for what was possible within stop-motion animation. We had so many technological and process advances in making Coraline . And then when I encountered Colin [Meloy]'s book a year later, I completely fell in love with it. It was right up my alley. It felt like it was almost bioengineered in a lab just for me.

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