A lonely fisherwoman is told there is “absolutely no shame” in spending the rest of her life alone.
Her response is considerably less conventional: she has someone build her a husband.
The first trailer for Wicker has arrived, offering a much closer look at the bizarre fantasy-comedy that pairs Olivia Colman with Alexander Skarsgård as perhaps the strangest romantic couple heading to cinemas this year.
Colman plays an ostracized fishmonger who commissions the village basketmaker, played by Peter Dinklage, to create the companion she has been denied.
What nobody anticipates is that the handcrafted husband will actually come to life.
Even less expected is what happens when he turns out to be a spectacular romantic partner.
Their increasingly passionate relationship soon becomes impossible for the surrounding village to ignore, provoking gossip, jealousy and fascination — and threatening to disrupt the community far more dramatically than the arrival of a living wicker man ever did.
Olivia Colman refuses to accept a life alone
Wicker takes place in a medieval community where Colman’s Fisherwoman occupies an uncomfortable position on the social margins.
She smells of her profession, remains unmarried and has become the target of other people’s judgments about how she should live.
The trailer establishes the attitude she is expected to accept.
“There’s absolutely no shame in living out your remaining days alone,” she is told.
The Fisherwoman clearly disagrees.
Rather than resigning herself to the future everyone else has imagined for her, she approaches the local Basketmaker with an extraordinary commission.
She wants a husband.
Peter Dinklage’s character takes on the task, weaving together a full-size man.
Then the creation becomes something far beyond an elaborate piece of craftsmanship.
Alexander Skarsgård becomes the Wicker Husband
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Alexander Skarsgård plays the resulting Wicker Husband.
Physically, there is no mistaking what he is.
His entire body appears woven from wicker, turning Skarsgård into a towering handmade figure who looks as though he should belong in folklore rather than somebody’s bedroom.
Yet Wicker immediately overturns the most obvious expectation.
This creature does not come to life and terrorize the village.
He falls in love with the Fisherwoman.
According to the film’s official premise, his “soulful spirit and unique prowess” awaken something inside her that she has been denied for years.
Their connection quickly develops into an intensely physical romance.
And that is where the real trouble begins.
‘We have our nights’
The trailer makes little attempt to hide the adult humor surrounding their relationship.
The villagers become fascinated by what exactly is happening between the Fisherwoman and her handcrafted husband.
Rumors spread.
“I heard that he’s strong as a tree and just as hard,” one villager says.
The Fisherwoman herself seems perfectly satisfied with the arrangement.
“He has his days. I have mine,” she explains.
“And we have our nights.”
Even the movie’s tagline leans enthusiastically into the joke: “A hard man is good to find.”
It establishes exactly the tone Wicker appears to be chasing.
The concept is knowingly ridiculous, the sexual humor is deliberate, but the filmmakers are also treating the central relationship as something emotionally meaningful.
The village does not know what to make of him
A woman marrying a living wicker figure would naturally attract some attention.
In this village, fascination quickly becomes something more disruptive.
The Fisherwoman has spent years being dismissed and judged.
Now she has found a relationship that apparently makes her extraordinarily happy — and suddenly the people who had accepted her loneliness become deeply interested in her private life.
Some are fascinated.
Others are jealous.
And some appear openly disturbed by the idea that a creature made from woven material could become a woman’s husband.
The reaction creates a useful reversal of the traditional monster story.
The Wicker Husband’s strange appearance is obvious.
But the conflict seems to come largely from the supposedly normal humans surrounding him.
Peter Dinklage plays the man responsible for creating him
Dinklage’s Basketmaker occupies an especially unusual position in the story.
He is the craftsman who answers the Fisherwoman’s request and creates the husband who subsequently turns village life upside down.
The casting also contains a particularly entertaining behind-the-scenes detail.
During the film’s Sundance appearance, Dinklage’s genuine basket-weaving abilities became a topic of conversation alongside Colman and Skarsgård’s unconventional onscreen romance.
The actor’s role is therefore not merely attached to wicker as a visual joke.
Basketmaking is fundamental to the strange fairy-tale premise.
One lonely woman asks for a husband.
One craftsman builds him.
And everybody else has to deal with the consequences.
Elizabeth Debicki joins the chaos
Elizabeth Debicki also stars in the film, adding another major name to the ensemble.
Her character is drawn into the growing fascination surrounding the couple as their relationship begins unsettling the social order of the village.
That disruption is central to the movie’s premise.
The Wicker Husband is not merely an impossible creature dropped into an otherwise normal community.
His relationship with the Fisherwoman exposes the jealousy, judgment and hypocrisy already present there.
Her neighbors were apparently prepared to accept her as an isolated spinster.
Watching her become happy with someone extraordinary is much harder for them to tolerate.
Olivia Colman loved the script
As strange as the concept sounds, Colman’s enthusiasm for the screenplay was unusually strong.
Speaking to Deadline during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, she said it ranked among her favorite scripts.
“I think it’s in my top three favorite scripts I’ve ever read,” Colman said.
That is significant praise from an actor whose career has ranged from The Favourite and The Crown to Broadchurch and The Lost Daughter.
It also suggests why the film’s deliberately absurd premise attracted such an accomplished cast.
Beneath the jokes about wicker anatomy sits a story about loneliness, desire and a woman refusing to accept the limited existence her community has prescribed for her.
The film made its debut at Sundance
Wicker premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where its unusual premise immediately helped distinguish it from more conventional festival titles.
The film comes from writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson.
Rather than toning down the fantastical elements, the pair appear to have embraced them completely.
The medieval world, the living wicker creation and the increasingly scandalized villagers all form part of a comedic fable rather than a story attempting to explain its central miracle through realism.
The audience is asked to accept that a basketmaker can create a living husband.
The more interesting question is what everyone does once he exists.
A monster movie where the monster is a romantic fantasy
That makes Wicker an unusual addition to the current resurgence of creature stories.
Alexander Skarsgård certainly looks monstrous in the most literal sense: his character is an impossible nonhuman being constructed from woven material.
But the Wicker Husband does not appear to function as a conventional monster.
He is the romantic fantasy.
The villagers’ response supplies the threat.
That places the film closer to stories that use fantastical creatures as sympathetic outsiders than traditional horror movies built around defeating them.
The creature’s humanity is measured not by what he looks like, but by how he treats the person who loves him.
And judging by the Fisherwoman’s comments in the trailer, she has very few complaints.
A familiar fairy tale turned inside out
There is something recognizable underneath the absurdity.
Fairy tales have spent centuries telling stories about magical transformations, impossible romances and creatures crossing the boundary between human and nonhuman worlds.
Wicker simply approaches those ideas from a much more adult direction.
Instead of a prince rescuing an unmarried woman, the Fisherwoman takes matters into her own hands.
She commissions exactly what she wants.
Instead of becoming frightened when her creation comes alive, she embraces him.
And instead of the monster destroying the village, the couple’s happiness seems to destabilize it.
The result turns several familiar fantasy conventions inside out while keeping the structure of a fable.
Black Bear picked up the film after Sundance
Following the film’s Sundance debut, Black Bear acquired its North American distribution rights in February.
The movie is scheduled to begin a limited theatrical release on October 23 before expanding widely one week later.
That gives Wicker an autumn release slot particularly well suited to its unusual mixture of fantasy, romance and creature-feature imagery.
But anyone expecting straightforward Halloween horror may be surprised.
The first trailer makes clear that Skarsgård’s wicker creation is not arriving to rack up a body count.
He is arriving to give one lonely Fisherwoman a very different life.
One of 2026’s strangest romances is taking shape
There are plenty of reasons the movie could have become nothing more than a novelty.
The central image alone — Olivia Colman passionately involved with Alexander Skarsgård covered head to toe in wicker — is strange enough to dominate the conversation.
Yet everything revealed so far suggests the filmmakers are deliberately using that absurdity rather than trying to escape it.
The jokes are there.
So is the sexual innuendo.
But so are loneliness, social exclusion, jealousy and the possibility of finding happiness in a form nobody else understands.
The Fisherwoman begins as someone being told to accept that she will spend her remaining years alone.
Instead, she asks a basketmaker to weave her a husband.
He comes alive.
He exceeds expectations.
And judging by the scandalized reaction of everyone around them, the village may never recover.
Wicker opens in limited theaters on October 23 before expanding nationwide on October 30.