Wicker Movie Release Date Today: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård’s Bizarre Wicker-Husband Fable (91% RT)

Wicker, the absurdist romantic comedy about a fisherwoman who commissions a husband woven entirely from wicker, opens in select US theatres today, 23 October 2026, before expanding nationwide on 30 October. Starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Dinklage, the film has landed with a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score after its Sundance premiere — and the wildest part is that Skarsgård’s wicker-man suit is a genuine, practical costume built over 18 months, not a single frame of CGI.

It is one of those premises you cannot unhear: an ostracised fisherwoman, ridiculed by her medieval seaside village, asks the local basketmaker to weave her a husband. The creation comes alive, turns out to be more sensitive and skilled than anyone expected, and proceeds to turn the conservative little community upside down. That is the whole engine of the film — a tall tale played completely straight, described by critics as bizarre, hilarious and unexpectedly moving.

Key Facts: Wicker Movie

The Story: A Fisherwoman and Her Woven Husband

The film is set in a medieval village, where Olivia Colman’s Fisherwoman lives on the fringes — mocked for smelling strongly of fish and for being alone. Lonely and defiant, she approaches the local basketmaker, played by Peter Dinklage, with an unusual order: build her a husband out of wicker. The basketmaker obliges, crafting a supernatural companion who comes to life in the form of Alexander Skarsgård.

Initially jeered by the villagers, the wicker man surprises everyone. He is not a lumbering monster; he is soulful, gentle and improbably capable, and his presence begins to soften the Fisherwoman’s hard edges while enraging the village’s judgmental core. Elizabeth Debicki plays the Tailor’s Wife, who leads a campaign against the Fisherwoman and her unconventional marriage. What starts as village gossip becomes a full-blown upheaval — a fable about desire, convention and who gets to decide what love is allowed to look like.

Directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson describe it in their own production notes as “a satirical comedy about sex and marriage, a unique visual spectacle, and a strange love story that would ground it all.” It is their second feature after the sci-fi comedy Save Yourselves!, and they have said their guiding ambition is simply to provide a good time — “You can’t love another person until you accept that you are deserving of love.”

The Suit: Real Wicker, 18 Months, Zero CGI

The detail that has travelled furthest in the film’s press tour is the costume. Skarsgård’s wicker husband is not computer-generated. Artists at New Zealand’s Weta Workshop spent around 18 months designing the suit, using digital scans and 3D printing to build 50 interlocking woven pieces, 13 of them for the face alone. The actor first saw it coming together over emails and video calls before finally stepping into it about two weeks before shooting began in Budapest.

“That was definitely a moment I’ll never forget, when I got to step into him,” Skarsgård has said of the suit. “I really want the audience to know that it was practical and that it wasn’t CGI. It was a masterpiece.”

Wearing it was its own education. The costume and make-up application started at several hours and was eventually shortened to under two hours. The suit came with pieces glued to his face, small lips and eyelashes made of flax and hair, and movement that had to be exaggerated to read through the weaving. As Skarsgård put it, it was the opposite of organic — a performance you act at half again the size of life.

The result is the film’s calling card: a fully practical creature that lets the comedy play at face value, which is arguably why critics keep reaching for the same word — original. Colman, an Oscar winner for The Favourite, has said the same: “I’d just never seen anything like that before. It was totally original.”

Why Critics Are Calling It a Cult Classic in the Making

The 91% Rotten Tomatoes score sits on a Metascore of 63 — good rather than rapturous — and the split is exactly what cult films are made of. Reviewers call it bizarre, hilarious and unexpectedly moving; the trailer alone made serious waves online. One line of coverage compares it to a medieval Edward Scissorhands, and others note the title winks at The Wicker Man, the bawdy British folk-horror classic that itself flopped before finding its audience.

Cult status is always a prediction, but Wicker checks the boxes: a one-breath premise you cannot forget, a cast with genuine awards pedigree playing it deadpan (Colman’s Oscar, Skarsgård’s Golden Globe, Emmy wins for Dinklage and Debicki), openly raunchy stretches balanced by a sincere heart, and a level of craft — Lol Crawley’s photography, the production design, that suit — that makes the world feel lived-in rather than sketched. The release timing helps too: a theatrical bow a week before Halloween is the perfect runway for a strange folk fable. And on 28 October, Black Bear is giving it a one-night-only 4DX event, with motion seating and environmental effects, in response to audience requests after the festival run.

What Pakistani Viewers Should Know

Here is the honest picture for Pakistani cinephiles: no Pakistan release has been announced for Wicker yet. The film’s confirmed roll-out covers the US, the UK, India (through PVR INOX Pictures with Superfine Films) and Australia, with no local distributor or date on the calendar. Pakistani film fans know the drill by now — titles like this typically reach the country first through streaming platforms a few months after their theatrical run, and the pirate circuit tends to beat everyone to it.

What makes it worth waiting for is not just the premise. This is exactly the kind of odd, awards-pedigreed, festival-buzzed title that travels well among Karachi and Lahore’s cinephile crowds — the same circles that turned out for everything from arthouse horror to auteur sci-fi when they finally landed. It is also the sort of film that lives or dies on word of mouth, and the wicker suit alone has already become a talking point on film Twitter and Bollywood news circles alike. Keep an eye out on streaming announcements in the coming months, and as always, skip the cam-rips — a film built on craft like this deserves a proper screen.

The Cast and Crew Behind the Fable

Beyond the leads, the ensemble includes Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan and Ella Bruccoleri, with Elizabeth Debicki’s scheming Tailor’s Wife and Richard E. Grant’s supporting role rounding out a cast that is far stronger than a premise this absurd usually gets. Behind the camera, Lol Crawley — the Oscar-winning cinematographer behind The Brutalist’s iconic imagery — gives the medieval village a lived-in glow, while composer Anna Meredith scores the film.

For fans of Colman, this is also a producer credit, and for Skarsgård it continues a streak of gloriously offbeat choices — his casting in the A24 romantic comedy Pillion was announced around the same time, confirming his current era is all in on the strange. For Dinklage, the basketmaker who weaves a husband is, as one critic put it, possibly his strangest premise yet — and he has spent years saying yes to strange.

Whether it becomes the next midnight-movie staple or just a beloved festival oddity, Wicker is the kind of theatrical event that rewards showing up. Tech launches and software roll-outs come and go every week, but a practical, non-CGI wicker man falling in love with Olivia Colman is the sort of thing you only get once a year. Catch it in a cinema if you can; the villagers’ jeers land better with a crowd.