October 25, 2026 — 5:00am

When he was a little boy, Travis Knight was transfixed by the pioneering films of the stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, whose signature works – including Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981) – transformed special-effects cinema.

Then, on television, he encountered the work of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, whose production company, Rankin Bass, created a slate of definitive stop-motion animated Christmas and holiday TV specials that remain a staple of pop culture to this day, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1968) and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974).

Prue McKeel, voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, right, and Mac, voiced by Arthur Knight, in Wildwood. Laika Studios via AP

“Stop-motion, it was a rarity even then, and for whatever reason I was drawn to it,” Knight says. “I loved other animation, I loved hand-drawn animation and this was before CG animation even existed.…