Sendak Me On My Way

Excellent news today from Warner Bros. According to Aint It Cool News, by way of Variety, the Dubba-Dubba-WB will be picking up director Spike Jonze's planned adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book Where the Wild Things Are.

I have no idea how Jonze will attempt to make this weirdo kids book into a movie. Usually, attempts to turn brief, beloved illustrated children's books into movies crash and burn with horrific results. Ron Howard's adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas added a bizarre, awful, awkward Grinch romance with Christine Baranski, and remains the only feature-length mainstream studio children's film I can think of in which all the major characters save one closely resemble human-sized insects. And Jumanji wasn't exactly the kind of classic thrill ride kids and parents can return to again and again, now was it? All I remember about that movie was cheesy CG rhinos and Robin Williams' typically incessant mugging. And let's not even get into Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express, that turns Chris Van Allsberg's classic Christmas story into a nightmarish collection of sleekly-rendered Nazi-esque freakouts starring a cast of undead, glazed-eyed kidnappers obsessed with hot chocolate. It's certain to mortally terrify the impressionable child in your family, a film most likely responsible for more youthful horrified, sleepless nights than Freddie Krueger.

And the book Where the Wild Things Are is similarly idiosyncratic, personal and brief. How will it work without the memorable illustrations? Even though the script will be composed (at least in part) by the rather brilliant writer/editor David Eggers, won't he have to add a lot of unneccessary incident to beef Max's oddessy up into a 90 minute movie? Isn't part of the joy of children's books that they exist in their own unique worlds with their own rules? Doesn't translating them visually, through live-action photography, essentially spoil the magic?

I have no idea. There isn't even concept art available from the film yet, which will just be beginning production now that the papers have been signed. I'm just interested to see what Jonze and particularly Eggers will develop, because I'm considerable fans of not only both of them, but also fo the book they're adapting.