The Official MovieSet Blog
Spike Jonze and where his Wild Things are right now
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
If you follow movies in development and are keen to fantasy or the works of Spike Jonze then undoubtedly you have been watching for any news about the director’s next film, a live-action adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s legendary childrens book Where the Wild Things Are. Warner Bros. had given Jonze $80 million dollars to bring Sendak’s imaginative story of a young boy’s friendship with large, furry monsters to life and had eyed a release date of October 2008. And then the reports of trouble started to trickle in: that Warner execs had not liked the early material that Jonze filmed, that they had trouble making the wild things look perfect on-screen and that the business side of the studio didn’t know how to shape the marketing of the film. Was this supposed to be a kids film by the guy that made Being John Malkovich?
But last year just when things looked bleak and speculation was running that the studio would yank Jonze off of the project, Warners did a wonderful thing and stood behind their director. WB opened up its purse strings and gave more money — but most importantly, more time — to Jonze to nail down his vision. The October ‘08 release date was jettisoned and Warners wisely chose to sit back and not pencil in a specific release date. In a business where film overruns and concern about the marketability of a picture can sink or swim careers, what Warner Bros. did was nothing short of visionary.
And now there’s a new ray of sunlight breaking through the stormy cloudcover: Jonze has given a long and informative interview with Ain’t It Cool News discussing where the project stands right now and his hopes for it. Distilled down the word from Jonze is that it’s looking optimistic, he’s hoping to have the film in a shape that he’s comfortable with by next May and that it would be out in theaters in the fall of ‘09. It’s a great interview in which to catch up with the status of Wild Things or even to introduce yourself to the potential for this special project.
Here’s a special treat: this is the test footage from two years ago when Spike wanted to see how the Wild Things looked alongside the film’s child actor, Max Records. There’s no CG touch-up, Carroll’s tail isn’t swishing around and the dubbing of his Wild Thing voice is blocky but damn if you can’t get a sense as to what kind of mood Spike Jonze wants to capture in Where the Wild Things Are: those wonderful and sad moments at just being a kid.
Posted at 2:22PM by Patrick
