Where the Wild Things Are to Be Completely Reshot? BONUS: WTWTA Test Footage!

CHUD has some very bad news for us. You might want to sit down for this. The Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is apparently getting scrapped, rewritten and reshot. Warner Bros did it to Paul Schrader's Exorcist and now they're doing it to Jonze. And while the suits will be saying it's because of technical issues, CHUD says:

It's not because of technical issues, unless you want to consider the lead kid actor and the script technical issues. Sources tell me that the suits at Legendary and Warner Bros are not happy with Max Records, the actor playing Max, the mischievous boy who is crowned King of the Wild Things. Worse than that, they don't like the film's tone and want to go back to the script drawing board, possibly losing the Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers script when they do it. Apparently the film is too weird and 'too scary,' and the character of Max is being seen as not likable.

Surely the studio didn't think they'd be getting a straight kids movie when they hired Jonze, isn't a little late to complain? This news comes a week after some early test footage was leaked to the internet...


Jonze had this to say about the footage:

that was a very early test with the sole purpose of just getting some footage to Ben our vfx supervisor to see if our vfx plan for the faces would work. The clip doesn’t look or feel anything like the movie, the Wild Thing suit is a very early cringy prototype, and the boy is a friend of ours Griffin who we had used in a Yeah Yeah Yeahs video we shot a few weeks before. We love him, but he is not in the actually film…Oh and that is not a wolf suit, its a lamb suit we bought on the internet.

Still, it looks freaking awesome. I love that the monster is jealous of ROBOTS. I'm really upset I might never get to see Jonze's film realized. It was probably my most anticipated upcoming film. I'll leave you with the words of a concerned mother from an early test screening of the film (via /Film):

And some kids at my screening began to cry and asked their parents to leave, so that should give you an idea. The things are not cute. Max comes off a bit weird and off-putting. He slaps his mom and he seems confused and not charming at all. No rumpus, no big set pieces, no ‘state-of-the-art’ lucrative sequences just some running around on some desert place and thats that.

*sigh* It sounds so wonderful...