It seemed like a match made in heaven. The classic Maurice Sendak children’s book Where the Wild Things Are and the one-time video wunderkind who brought a sure-handed touch to offbeat Charlie Kaufman material in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Throw in a screenplay by lit-hipster Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and what could go wrong? But Spike Jonze’s $80 million adaptation of Wild Things appears to have gone off the rails.
According to Patrick Goldstein at the L.A. Times, the movie “was originally slated for release this October but got pushed back to the fall of 2009. Last week it disappeared entirely from the Warner Bros. release schedule, a sign of continuing troubles. The script got good early reviews. But for months the Web has been pulsing with rumors and in-depth accounts that when Jonze had a research screening last December, kids in the audience were crying and fleeing the theater--not exactly the reaction the studio had hoped for.”
Apparently one big problem is that the young boy at the center of the story is “almost entirely unlikable, coming off as more mean-spirited and bratty than mischievous.” Then there’s the matter of the wild things themselves, originally a mix of actors in furry suits and animatronic puppets. No one was happy with these critters, who are now being replaced by (of course) CGI wild things.
This is not the first time an adaptation of Where the Wild Things has run into trouble. Disney attempted a version in the ’80s, with none other than Pixar maven John Lasseter at the helm. Check out Goldstein’s story for a clip of test footage from that never-made cartoon.
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