What’s in this guide
Every village has its rules about who gets to be happy. Olivia Colman plays a fisherwoman who breaks all of them at once: shut out by her neighbors, she goes to the local basket weaver and commissions the one thing the village cannot forgive, a husband of her own, woven from wicker and brought to life. Wicker is the strangest love story of the year, a romantic fantasy comedy that premiered at Sundance to glowing reviews and opens wide in theaters on October 30, 2026. This guide covers the release dates, the final trailer, the cast, how the wicker husband was actually built, the reviews, and where to watch it.
Wicker Release Date
Wicker opens in select US theaters on Friday, October 23, 2026, then expands nationwide and opens across the UK on Friday, October 30, 2026, with Australia following on November 5. Black Bear is distributing. The film first appeared at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, where it was one of the festival’s word-of-mouth hits, and it has been gathering curious momentum ever since.
It runs 105 minutes and is rated 15 in the UK, which fits a fable that is sweet on the surface and cheerfully adult underneath. This is a comedy about sex, marriage and village small-mindedness wearing a fairy tale’s clothes, not a children’s film, and the reviews out of Sundance suggest that balance is exactly why it works.
Wicker Trailer
Black Bear’s final trailer, released this week, introduces the arrangement plainly: the fisherwoman places her order, the basket weaver tells her to be at the chapel in a month, and Alexander Skarsgård arrives as a gentle giant of woven twigs who fixes the furniture, including the bed the newlyweds keep breaking. The footage plays the premise completely straight, which is what makes it funny, and what makes the village’s jealousy sting. Watch it here:
What Is Wicker About?
In a conservative seaside village, a fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) lives on the outside of everything: unmarried, unbothered, and treated as a problem the community would rather not solve. So she solves it herself. She commissions the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband, and a month later she meets him at the chapel: the Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård), a man of woven twigs who turns out to be kind, devoted, tireless and, to the village’s horror, spectacular company in every department.
She did not wait for a husband. She ordered one.
Her happiness is the scandal. The woman the village pushed aside now has the one thing everyone else is quietly missing, and fascination curdles into jealousy, led by the bitter Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), whose own marriage is the film’s bleak running joke. Writers and directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, adapting Ursula Wills’ short story “The Wicker Husband,” aim the fable squarely at the absurdities of social convention: the marriage is impossible, but every reaction to it is painfully recognizable.
How Weta Built a Husband
The wicker husband is not a digital effect. Weta Workshop, the New Zealand shop behind The Lord of the Rings and Avatar, spent roughly 18 months designing and fabricating a fully practical, wearable wicker suit, built by designer Joe Dunckley with prosthetic masks and only limited digital touches. Skarsgård performs inside it, which is why the character moves, embraces and dances like a person instead of a render, and why the intimate scenes needed careful choreography and an intimacy coordinator like any other love story.
Skarsgård has said the real challenge was not the suit but the soul: he admitted at Sundance that playing a character with no internal darkness, a purely good-hearted and morally righteous man, genuinely intimidated him, because he usually hides inside conflicted roles. Critics have rewarded the risk. Wicker holds a 92 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from 39 reviews, with a 64 on Metacritic, and the consensus calls it absurdly funny and quietly heartbreaking at once, carried by Colman’s warmth and the year’s most unlikely leading man.
Cast and Crew
Cast photos: Wikimedia Commons
The village around them is just as well cast: Nabhaan Rizwan as the Tailor, Marli Siu as his wife’s sister, Richard E. Grant as the eccentric and incompetent village doctor, Ben Ashenden as the Baker and Kiell Smith-Bynoe as the Innkeeper, in a story where nearly every character is named for their trade. Behind the camera, cinematographer Lol Crawley, an Oscar winner for The Brutalist, gives the village a storybook glow, Anna Meredith (Eighth Grade) provides the bold, playful score, and production designer Renato Cseh (Poor Things) builds a world pretty enough to make its small-mindedness funnier. Colman also produces.
Where to Watch Wicker
For now, Wicker is a cinema-only release. It plays in select US theaters from October 23, 2026, expands nationwide and opens in UK cinemas on October 30, and reaches Australia on November 5. It is worth seeing on a screen big enough to appreciate the craft: every twig of the husband was physically built, and the film wears that handmade quality proudly.
No streaming or digital release date has been announced yet. A film with this much festival warmth usually moves to digital rental and purchase a few weeks after its theatrical run, with a subscription streaming home decided by Black Bear after that. We will update this guide the moment a streaming date is confirmed.
Wicker FAQ
When does Wicker come out?
October 23, 2026 in select US theaters, expanding nationwide and opening in UK cinemas on October 30, 2026, with Australia on November 5. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2026.
What is Wicker about?
An ostracized fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) commissions the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband out of wicker. The Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgard) proves more wonderful than anyone expected, and the village’s jealousy threatens the couple’s happiness. It is a romantic fantasy comedy and fable, not a horror film.
Who is in the Wicker cast?
Olivia Colman as the Fisherwoman, Alexander Skarsgard as the Wicker Husband, Peter Dinklage as the Basket Weaver, Elizabeth Debicki as the Tailor’s Wife, Nabhaan Rizwan as the Tailor, Marli Siu, Richard E. Grant as the village doctor, Ben Ashenden and Kiell Smith-Bynoe.
Is Wicker based on a book?
It is based on the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills, adapted for the screen by the film’s directors, Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson.
How was the Wicker Husband made?
Practically. Weta Workshop spent about 18 months building a wearable wicker suit with prosthetic masks, designed by Joe Dunckley, and Alexander Skarsgard performs inside it with minimal digital help.
How long is Wicker, and what is it rated?
105 minutes, rated 15 in the UK. It is an adult fable about love, sex and marriage, told as a comedy.
Will Wicker be on streaming?
No streaming date has been announced yet. It opens exclusively in theaters, and a digital release is expected to follow the theatrical run. This guide will be updated when it is confirmed.
Once in a while a film arrives that nobody can quite compare to anything else, and Wicker is this year’s: a love story between a woman and a man made of twigs that somehow lands as the most honest marriage movie of the season. See it with an audience if you can, because the laughter is half the fun. And if handmade fantasy is your thing this month, our Wildwood guide covers Laika’s stop-motion epic, the season’s other great argument for practical craft.
