Where The Wild Things Are

[Reinhold]

this book was such a huge part of my childhood. even though we all know what often happens with book adaptations, i have a really good feeling about this movie.  i can't wait to see the island and the wild things themselves. when i was a kid, i used to think about the trip to the place where the wild things are and play in my back yard like i was max on my way there.

i got really sick for a few days while i was home for vacation. my mom got me a hardcover edition of the book for christmas. i destroyed my first copy from overuse when i was a kid. she came up and read it to me while i was in bed and it brought back a lot of really great memories. i can't wait to see this movie.

[72teeth]

could those ears belong to Max....

and again, Spike makes something I wish were real...
http://millerauditions.com/

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Catherine Keener speaking to Charlie Rose on Friday's show:

"I'm getting ready to work with him again. He's doing Where the Wild Things Are. He's doing it in New Zealand. I'm playing the mom looking for Max. Then there will be six actors or so performing the roles of the monsters, the wild things. And then Henson's company is making puppets."

[Pubrick]

Catherine Keener speaking to Charlie Rose on Friday's show:

"I'm getting ready to work with him again. He's doing Where the Wild Things Are. He's doing it in New Zealand. I'm playing the mom looking for Max. Then there will be six actors or so performing the roles of the monsters, the wild things. And then Henson's company is making puppets."

"... and then i'm getting fired for revealing too much."

[MacGuffin]

Voices roam for "Wild Things"
Source: Hollywood Reporter

A diverse group of vocal talents, including Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, Michael Berry Jr., Paul Dano, Tom Noonan, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker and Michelle Williams, has been recruited to provide the voices of the titular characters in writer-director Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book "Where the Wild Things Are."

The film, which Warner Bros. Pictures is producing in association with Legendary Pictures, will combine voice performances, live-action puppetry and computer animation to dramatize the ad-ventures of Max, a rebellious young boy who runs away from home after a fight with his mother and finds himself in a forest where the wild things roam.
 
A Playtone/Wild Things production, the project will employ a script by Jonze and Dave Eggers. The production team will include production designer K.K. Barrett, cinematographer Lance Acord and editor Eric Zumbrunnen. The producers are Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, Sendak, John Carls and Vincent Landay. The exec producers are Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni.

[modage]

from a JoBlo interview with Mark Ruffalo...

What about WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE? Anybody get hit in that? [laughter]

No, no. There's some animals flying, bouncing off the trees and stuff like that. They're like stuffed animals. They're creatures... but they're made of...

I know the book.

Jim Henson made the creatures... they're Jim Henson puppets. They're not real animals.

So you're a voice in that?

No, no, I'm...there's live action. It's all live action, really. I play the mother's boyfriend who's kind of you know... wishes he could be the father of a child but is too immature.

It's not that difficult you know...

I have two. It is difficult. It's not that easy! [Laughing]

Who plays the mother?

Catherine Keener . She's great.

Yeah, I always hear great things about her. I've actually talked to her before and she's amazing.

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has this already been shot?!

[MacGuffin]

[picolas]

 

[Pubrick]

the lady in blue is looking for neve campbell.

and i'm looking for a time machine so i can watch this and witness the redemption of mankind.

[72teeth]

y'know, i cant fucking wait for this either, "wizard of oz of our time" <agreed, but i shutter when thinking of the hot topic crowd that will jizz all over this, almost to the point where i dread this movie even coming out.... fuck those kids....
i'll be seeing this with side-blinders on...



Fuck Those Kids.

[Stefen]

Only thing that needs is a Caldecott medal and it's the book cover.

Beautiful.

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We've Got Dave Eggers's and Spike Jonze's Script for 'Where the Wild Things Are'
Source: NYMag

...and it is really, really good.

In transforming the 338-word story of Where the Wild Things Are into a 111-page screenplay, Eggers and Jonze have fleshed out the story not, unexpectedly, with wild plot developments, and not, thankfully, with densely packed pop-fiction references. Instead Where the Wild Things Are is filled with richly imagined psychological detail, and the screenplay for this live-action film simply becomes a longer and more moving version of what Maurice Sendak's book has always been at heart: a book about a lonely boy leaving the emotional terrain of boyhood behind.

We certainly have our problems with Dave Eggers's writing at times, but one thing he has always been able to do is to recall with great specificity the excitement, small joys, and great disappointments of childhood. In many ways, between his work at 826 Valencia and his most recent novel, What Is the What, his infatuation and identification with childhoods ordinary and extreme has remained at the center of his career. This ability to conjure up authentic moments of boyish emotion is combined, in Where the Wild Things Are, with Spike Jonze's devilishly inventive visual sense to create something pretty amazing.

Max, the hero of Wild Things, is now an 8-year-old with an absent father, an older sister who's drifting away from him, a mother whose personal and job concerns leave her little time or energy for the rambunctious boy she dearly loves. Eggers and Jonze — mostly, we suspect, Eggers — touchingly sketch this troubled family unit and carefully track the rising frustration and alarm Max feels as his world becomes darker and more unhappy, until, on page 21, he runs away, climbs aboard a boat, and sails to the island of the Wild Things.

There Jonze's influence begins to be felt, as the enormous creatures — with names like Carol, Alexander, and K.W. — look to Max as their King, and in a series of marvelous adventures, wrestle tornadoes, eat mud, and tame hawks. Always, though, there's a subtle undercurrent of menace, and it becomes clear that while spinning a yarn, Jonze and Eggers are also taking us on a tour of Max's psyche, as he works out so many of the issues that plague his young life. But any time the drama threatens to overcome the story's wonder, along comes another visual cherry bomb to shake things up: a tiny model of a city with rivers for streets; a pile of Wild Things, wiggling and wet, with Max sleeping against them; Max's final hiding place, and how he gets out. We won't give too much more away, because the pleasures of this screenplay are in its moment-to-moment details and discoveries.

We were deeply nervous about anyone taking on a story this beloved yet difficult, even talents like Eggers and Jonze, but this screenplay — if it hasn't been changed too dramatically since October 2005, when it was turned in — goes a long way toward reassuring us that this movie, which is coming out in 2008, will be something special.

[MacGuffin]

Dave Eggers's Next Novel Is Based on 'Where the Wild Things Are'?
Source: NY Mag

Publishers Weekly reports that the Frankfurt Book Fair is abuzz with talk about Dave Eggers's new novel, which apparently quietly sold to Ecco last winter. Ecco, the small, super-literary imprint at Harper, doesn't usually brag about sales potential, usually because most of its books don't have a lot of sales potential. According to PW, though, Ecco chief Dan Halpern is telling everyone at the fair that the book — an adult novel based on Where the Wild Things Are, scheduled to be published in 2008 to coincide with Spike Jonze's movie, for which Eggers co-wrote the screenplay — will be a monster hit, if you'll pardon the expression. "I think it's going to be his biggest book. I think it's going to be huge." We kind of think so, too, so color us pretty excited.

[MacGuffin]

Ambrose is simply 'Wild' for Jonze pic
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Lauren Ambrose is going into the wild, voicing one of the title roles in Spike Jonze's fantasy film "Where the Wild Things Are" for Warner Bros.

In the feature adaptation of Maurice Sendak's children's tale, Ambrose will play KW, one of the giant creatures in the land of the Wild Things. When a young boy named Max visits their strange world, KW and company turn him into their king.

Ambrose is replacing the previously cast Michelle Williams. According to a production source, the filmmakers enjoyed working with Williams, but her voice didn't match their original vision of how the Wild Thing should sound.

Warner Bros. is producing the Playtone/Wild Things production in association with Legendary Pictures and Village Roadshow. Jonze and Dave Eggers wrote the adapted screenplay. Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, Sendak, John Carls and Vincent Landay are producing the film, which will use real actors, computer animation and live-action puppeteering. The film is set for release in fall 2008.

Ambrose is starring in the Fox series "The Return of Jezebel James" and appears opposite Frank Langella in Roadside Attractions' drama "Starting Out in the Evening." During the summer, she played Juliet in the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of "Romeo and Juliet" in New York.

[modage]

totally unfinished, but it screened.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34943

this makes it real.