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Thanks for finding my image. You should link to our story which has further updates on Wild Things. The guy who wrote Alvin & The Chipmunks did a polish on the script.

Psst, I did link you: if you click the image, it takes you to your blog.

domino harvey wrote:Psst, I did link you: if you click the image, it takes you to your blog.

oh, duh, thank you. i'm glad i've finally joined this forum, seems like a place i should spend outside just shamelessly promoting myself.

Warner's head Alan Horn comments about the film that has now been taken off the studio's release schedule entirely.

Just saw this image today. It looks wonderful. Who knows where this is all going.

If MTV is showing an image of it does that mean that this will get a release date? It just doesn't seem to me that a station like MTV would show something like that unless it was for marketing purposes.

Horn does give some hope, even if what he's saying isn't good news.

Floyd wrote:

Just saw this image today. It looks wonderful. Who knows where this is all going.

Away from what you see in that photograph, that's for sure.

Alan Horn wrote:Horn denied rumors that the studio has taken Jonze off the movie, saying he remains fully supportive of the filmmaker. "We've given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film," Horn said. "We'd like to find a common ground that represents Spike's vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience

That's contradictory. Spike's 'vision' is not one for a broad audience.

We obviously still have a challenge on our hands. But I wouldn't call it a problem, simply a challenge. No one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a very special piece of material and we're just trying to get it right."

Really?

Really?

Oh, and the Wachowski Bros. were the PERFECT choice for Speed Racer. Why would anyone suggest otherwise?

I'm all for artistic autonomy, but the leaked video was not fantastic. I think people are quick to champion Spike Jonze on principle (as am I) without considering that his "vision" may be total and utter shit. At the very least, the film was problematic before the studio intervened, and now that they've stuck their hand in the pie who knows what we'll get?

Svevan wrote:I'm all for artistic autonomy, but the leaked video was not fantastic.

If we're thinking of the same video.

A)It was test footage, and nothing from the actual film. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

B) I loved that footage. It had a lowkey tone absent from most children's films.

Cold Bishop wrote:B) I loved that footage. It had a lowkey tone absent from most children's films.

Me too.

The LA Times updates the story I linked above and it now includes test footage done by a pre-Pixar John Lasseter when he was at Disney back in 1983.

Jonze has also had tons of issues with the wild things. Originally shot as actors in furry creature suits with animated faces, as well as animatronic puppets, they were a big disappointment. Instead of being scary or funny, they almost seemed blank, with little warmth or emotion. Jonze is now retooling the film, using CGI to create more life-like monsters.

Ugh.

using CGI to create more life-like monsters.

I wonder if the journalist who wrote that realized how idiotic a statement that is.

What a shame. I imagine the movie will be painful to sit through after having seen the early test footage.

I know someone who knows Maurice Sendak who is, in his senior years, crusty - to put it mildly. Apparently Jonze was using Sendak as a club to call up and scream uncivilly at clueless studio executives - "Leave Spike alone! He knows what he's doing!" (Or Sendak was doing this of his own accord.) Sounds like this campaign may not have been successful.

According to my source, for both Sendak & Jonze the child protagonist's likability deficit was intentional, and true to the book and to Sendak's view of children as often unconsciously cruel & insensitive in their behavior.

I guess this is what being a film fan in the 1940's would have been like had the Internet been around back then.

Producer Gary Goetzman says the Spike Jonze will have final cut on the film, and that the film's delays had nothing to do with reported kid-scaring test screenings, but with Jonze's initial insistence on using animatronic monsters, instead of CGI.

Sendak endorses Jonze's film version.

Now scheduled for October 16, 2009.

Fletch F. Fletch wrote:Sendak endorses Jonze's film version.

Thanks for the link, very touching interview.

Forgot to mention this but about three weeks ago I met Spike Jonze at the Synecdoche after party and asked him how Where the Wild Things Are was coming. He excitedly told me they just picture locked and are now working on sound, score and special effects. He seemed totally happy and optimistic, no mention of any bad blood or difficulties with the studio.

I thanked him and told him congratulations on Synecdoche - I loved it (total lie).

A ridiculously long interview with Jonze and his editor. AICN warning in effect.

Oscar winning SFX guy Howard Berger on why he turned down the opportunity to work on the film four times.

Jonze is also working on a documentary about Maurice Sendak (I'm guessing as a DVD extra - see bottom of the page).

Hot Movie Drama: Where the Wild Things Are
Rolling Stone

No film project has enthralled the indie-blogiverse more than Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are. But in the past year, the film has been plagued by rumors: that Jonze's version was too dark, that the studio hated it, that Jonze might take his name off the movie. Here, the media-shy Jonze finally sets the record straight on one of 2009's most anticipated films.

Fans were thrilled that you and Eggers were collaborating on WTWTA. But then it was reported that Warner Bros. was concerned about an early version, that it wasn't the mass-audience movie they wanted. What happened?
Well, the editing process wasn't always fun, but in the end, we've made the movie we set out to make. All the reasons you were excited about it, those were the reasons they [Warner Bros.] were uncomfortable with it. It isn't what they're familiar with. But they've become comfortable and embraced it. In the end, they let me finish my movie.

They had to have known if they hired you and Eggers, it was going to be unusual.
It's just not the kind of movie that they make on their own. In most movies about kids, there's, like, a movie reality: The conflict is a movie conflict, the kid is a movie kid. So when you see behavior or a tone that's not like that, it took them a while to embrace that.

What specifically did you and the producers argue about?
You know, it's like talking about a couple that's been fighting and going to counseling. What matters now is that we made it through all of that — and it's probably better not to rehash what happened in counseling. I got to make my movie. It is true to the intention of what I set out to do.

What was your intention?
I wanted to make a movie that felt true to me and my experience of being a kid, trying to understand the world and people around me, trying to understand the relationships and wild emotions inside me and the people I was close to. As a kid, there's no road map to navigate any of that. Basically, I wanted to take this nine-year-old kid seriously as a person who is trying to understand the world and himself.

Some early reports said that the film might be too intense for young kids.
We're walking that line of making something that's intense, because kids are so open that something that's just kind of intense is really intense to an eight-year-old. But any rumor gets so blown out of proportion.

Is it a film for young kids?
It's not for all four-year-olds. It might not be right for one four-year-old but could work for another. When Maurice wrote the book, Max was five. When I started, it felt like the natural age for Max was eight or nine. So the movie is different in that way.

Is it true there was a moment you almost walked away?
It goes back to the couples counseling. There was definitely a point in time when they were sleeping on the sofa.

Has Maurice Sendak seen it?
Maurice is happy with it. It was important to me that he felt it was honest. To know that he is happy and didn't think it was pandering or cutesy . . . that passed his barometer test of honesty. That meant a lot.

What was the biggest lesson of all this?
I think I was sort of willfully naive about how hard it was going to be, given the size of the movie, the technical difficulty, that it's a movie starring a kid, shot on locations. But I think it's important to stay naive through all of that. If you make decisions based on how hard they're going to be, then it could be a mistake. So I hope I can be as naive to how hard it is next time. But I need to sleep for a year before I can do anything again.