Trailer Tuesday: Where the Wild Things Are
A lot of my favourite bloggers have been going slowly delirious with excitement over Where the Wild Things Are, the big screen adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book.
Personally I'm embarrassed to admit I've never even heard of the illustrated book, which has apparently been a staple on kids' reading lists since 1963 (Note to self: ask my mother, a Grade 1 teacher, about it). Anyway, the book is just 10 sentences long, yet somehow it has been expanded to a full length feature film. It focuses on a young boy, Max (Max Records) whose misbehaviour sees him sent to his room after defying his mother (Catherine Keener). Feeling, alone, angry and unloved, Max's imagination transports him to the land of the Wild Things, large furry monsters who thrive on mischief.
Where the Wild Things Are is directed by Spike Jonze, the celebrated music video director who has also responsible for the offbeat movie hits, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Jonze seems like an odd choice for what is essentially a family adventure film, but apparently the film adaptation has been a pet project of his for a while now. And judging by the trailer the film does look deliciously "different" and strikingly imaginative. Which is always a plus.
Out of interest, the seven Wild Things have been created using a combination of costume work (actors in 9-feet tall outfits made of foam), live-action puppetry, animatronics and computer animation for the creatures' faces.
There have, of course, been rumours of interference and dissatisfaction by Warner Brothers, the studio behind the film... largely because the film is apparently so apologetically freaky and downright unusual. But I guess only time will tell whether Jonze escaped meddling from above, or whether the studio execs were right to worry about the director's vision. If you're interested you can read several Ain't It Cool News articles about the film's development here, including an indepth interview with Jonze.
Where the Wild Things Are opens in the US on 16 October. Needless to say that's so far away that the South African release date is currently nonexistent.
Comments
In other words, my kind of read.
Anyway, how are they going to convert that into a feature-length film?
I'm expecting there to be a lot more emphasis on Max's troubled home life i.e. his resistance to his mother dating. And presumably life in the land of the Wild Things won't be so peachy either. Maybe they won't let Max go, or there's some kind of villain introduced to the story. I don't know.
Curiously I hear that a lot of new material is also being introduced into the Fantastic Mr Fox animated film as well.
Film makers, I really don't know... When they aren't struggling to condense long and complicated books into films, they're padding out the simpler ones to make the same problems for themselves.