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If someone told you Alexander Skarsgård was playing Olivia Colman’s husband, you probably wouldn’t think twice. But what if that husband was made from wicker? That’s the premise of “Wicker,” a strange new romantic fantasy arriving in cinemas this October 2026. Before you decide this is simply a very elaborate wicker basket joke, here’s everything you need to know about the movie.
What Is Wicker About?
The route to romance is pretty unusual in “Wicker.” Written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, the movie drops you into a seaside village where being single isn’t exactly a recipe for social acceptance. You follow an ostracized fisherwoman, played by Olivia Colman, who decides to skip the usual dating nonsense and commission a husband from a basketmaker.
What she gets is Skarsgård as a very handsome, very unusual wicker creation. Once he comes to life, the new husband quickly becomes the talk of the village. The women who once mocked the fisherwoman suddenly become fascinated, and more than a little jealous.
The July 30 trailer gives you a taste of the film’s bawdy humor, including one villager’s claim that the wicker man is “strong as a tree and just as hard.” But there’s romance underneath the jokes, too. The fisherwoman even gets the wonderfully earnest declaration, “You are the reason I live and breathe,” from a man who is, literally, made from basket material.
So, Is He Actually Made From Wicker?
Yes, pretty much. Skarsgård isn’t playing a regular man who happens to have a serious wicker obsession. His character is a man created from the material. You could compare him to Frankenstein’s monster, except his creator swaps out stitched-together body parts for woven material. Many also liken him to Pinocchio, although this time, you get a fully grown man and not a wooden boy.
And if you’re wondering how you film a romance between a woman and a human-sized basket, well, it required plenty of craftsmanship. As practical filmmaking has made a strong comeback in 2026, from Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s “Project Hail Mary,” Wicker takes the idea in a much smaller and weirder direction.
There’s minimal CGI here, with Joe Dunckley as the art director and prosthetic makeup designer and Sarah Rubano from Wētā Workshop as makeup and hair designer, handling much of the character’s physical design. Skarsgård wore a functional suit with prosthetics, including a 3D-printed shell molded to his body and real wicker woven over it. The creators of the movie mainly used digital effects to make the gaps between the wicker appear hollow.
Naturally, Skarsgård had a sense of humor about the whole thing. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he joked that while most male actors dream of playing Hamlet, his dream was to have “nipples made out of wicker.” You can probably file that under career milestones you never expected to hear about.
Where Did This Idea Come From?
The “Wicker” is an adaptation of a short story by Ursula Wills-Jones, “The Wicker Husband.” It’s a 14-page tale that you can read in roughly 15 minutes. First published in 2008, the story follows a woman who wants to marry but her village mocked her, so she turns to a basketmaker for help. Like other book-to-film adaptations, it’s bringing the story to the screen. The story has previously been available to read for free on Scribd, but at the time of writing, that copy is no longer available.
So, if you were hoping to squeeze in the original before seeing the movie, you may have to do a little more hunting. Still, the basic setup is already wonderfully strange. You’ll find an outsider, a basketmaker, a handmade husband and an entire village that suddenly has a lot to say about someone else’s marriage.
Why Wicker Is More Interesting Than “Olivia Colman Marries a Basket”
You can joke about the premise all you like, but the “Wicker” movie has more going on than a Hollywood heartthrob dressed like patio furniture. Even the character’s name gives you a clue. Instead of traditional names, the movie identifies the characters by their trades. The main cast includes:
- Olivia Colman, playing the lonely fisherwoman at the heart of the story
- Alexander Skarsgård, taking on the very unusual role of her wicker-made husband
- Peter Dinklage, as the craftsman who creates him
- Elizabeth Debicki, as the tailor’s wife
- Marli Siu, playing the tailor’s wife’s sister
- Nabhaan Rizwan, as the village tailor
- Richard E. Grant, as the local doctor
You also get Ben Asheden, Scott Alexander Young, Anders Olof Grundberg, Daniel Bullus, Kiell Smith-Bynoe and more in the cast.
The adult humor also makes “Wicker” considerably less wholesome than its fairy-tale setting might suggest. The cast clearly saw more in the script than its unusual premise. Colman told Deadline that it was one of her “top three favorite scripts” she had ever read, adding that she wanted to play the Fisherwoman and thought “this would be a beautiful film.”
Skarsgård, meanwhile, admitted at Sundance in January 2026 that playing such a “good-hearted, good-natured, sweet, morally righteous character” intimidated him. He told the audience that the script was both a fable and an allegory about society without becoming “heavy-handed.”
There’s already a disagreement among critics about this movie, which makes things interesting. The Guardian gave “Wicker” two stars, arguing that, like the dream husband at the heart of the story, it “looks the part but there’s nothing underneath.” On the other hand, Rotten Tomatoes lists the film at 91% from 23 reviews, with praise for its visual style, Colman’s work and Skarsgård’s performance.
When Can You See It in the Cinema?
You won’t have to wait much longer to see whether a romance between Olivia Colman and a wicker man can actually hold together. “Wicker” was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2026, and the trailer arrived in July, so you can get a taste of its decidedly adult sense of humor.
The film will play in a small number of cinemas on October 23, 2026, before opening nationwide on October 30. That gives you a chance to catch it early if your local cinema is among the first to screen it, or wait until the wider release if you’d rather have more options.
A Love Story With Some Serious Weave
It’s not every day you can walk into a cinema expecting a love story about a woman and a man made of a wicker basket. That alone makes “Wicker” worth keeping an eye on. The premise is strange, the filmmaking is ambitious, and the cast seems to have taken the whole thing seriously. Now you just have to see if this unlikely romance can hold its shape.
