Where Are the Wild Things?
Patrick Goldstein reports on a conversation he had with Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn regarding Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are. Originally scheduled for release in October, the film based on Maurice Sendak’s beloved childhood storybook met with disastrous test screenings in February. For one thing, it was found to be too dark and scary for little kids. Also, the boy who plays the main character Max was deemed to be unlikeable. Personally I remember the book to have been pretty dark and scary when I was little and the original Max was pretty bratty.
Another problem was that the plan to bring the monsters to life using humans inside of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop suits with CGI animated faces wasn’t working as planned.
The release was first pushed back to Fall of 2009 and last week it was removed from Warners’ calendar altogether. Concerns have floated around that the film would have to be reshot and that Spike Jonze might be kicked off the picture.
Warner Bros. has already had one expensive art movie disguised as a kids’ film bomb on them (coughcoughSpeedRacercough), are they leery of yet another one? According to Horn, they’re not going for “a bland, sanitized studio movie.” They’ve “given [Jonez] more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film.” Still, Horn makes it clear the studio is hoping for a film “that really delivers for a broad based audience.”
The question is: will Warner Bros. and Jonze be able to find that middle ground? Will audiences care either way?
Filed under: Miscellaneous
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Craig, Max is a quintessential brat! But of course as you note this is a children’s classic, the winner of the 1964 Caldecott Medal, and perhaps the most-widely read and popular of all the Caldecott winners. In my school as in virtually every other this is one of the most often read-alouds to the youngest kids.
That’s too bad about the disasterous test screenings as this one is promising. Let’s hope subsequent revisions will save it.
I smell another Assassination of Jesse James situation here. I hope that Jonze’s version at least gets a fair shake with wider audiences. Test screening a movie like this typically yields unpredictable results. Just ask Terry Gilliam.
Max was the quintessential brat, but he is also a character that children can identify with. Or at least I did. And the book does indeed have a dark aspect to it, as do many children’s stories, with good reason.
This was one of my favorite books as a kid and I bought it for my niece. I’m very sad to hear that the movie adaptation may not do it justice.
According to Devin Faraci in the February Chud article I linked, his friend said it was pretty great. Probably not the kids’ film WB imagined, but tough shit. As Goldstein said they should’ve hired Chris Columbus if they wanted that.
The problem might be that WB wanted a film for kids and Jonze made one for adults. That one early test clip was entrancing.
Fingers crossed.
Coincidentally, I noticed that the beasties in the first Hellboy used the same trick of sticking a guy in a suit for large parts of the action and then adding on a CGI ‘face’.
A situation like this, though, makes me wonder why some Hollywood heavy-hitter, like a Spielberg or a Tim Burton or someone with an eye for talent and a vision, can’t step up for these kinds of projects. I mean, when you have all the money in the world and when you love movies, don’t you want to do anything in your power to see more good ones get made, or does the Hollywood mindset of ‘don’t go too far out on a limb’ take over?
Wow I wasn’t even familiar with that half human/half suit/half CGI (three halves) method. On paper it sounds awkward, but I guess it works?
This is one of those books that just has such huge expectations. How can it possibly live up to everyone’s imagination?
I think the split costume/CGI is a wonderful idea because the main flaw with costumes is facial expressions…..of course the main flaw with CGI is also facial expressions, but it’s an improvement.
I don’t recall Hellboy 1 being that way Jeff, though that’s not to say it wasn’t. If it was, they did a very good job.