Where The Wild Things Are

Anticipation for the upcoming Spike Jonze directed Where The Wild Things Are film continues to build. In this nice little featurette, original author Maurice Sendak gives some background on the initial response to his book and his thoughts about Spike Jonze’s vision. It’s very interesting to hear Maurice talk about the terrible reviews that greeted the book’s publication back in 1963. The original book, just ten sentences long, is now regarded as a masterpiece of illustrated children’s literature, but it took a few years for it to be recognised as the classic it is. It’s fair to say that Spike’s film may well go the same way. There are big risks in bringing any classic book to the big screen, and in the featurette, Maurice says that he expects Spike’s film to generate controversy, while also pointing out that he has complete faith in Spike, and he encouraged the director to follow his own vision for the film. I think this is going to be a classic Spike Jonze film and judging from the footage seen so far, I can’t think of any other director better suited to the project. The film opens here later this year.