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Much has been made of the delays surrounding Spike Jonze’s long-gestating adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Rumors of reshoots, studio interference and script rewrites have been running rampant all year. All of the problems have stemmed from a research screening held last December, in which kids in the audience were seen crying and fleeing the theater–not exactly the reaction the studio had hoped for.

Since then Spike Jonze has been rumored on and off of the film, all the while taking the additional time and money to go back and continue to evolve the film back to a place that won’t scare off the kiddies. As Patrick Goldstein at The LA Times points out, the issues with Wild Things have exposed some of the “pitfalls of Warners’ strategy of marrying gifted directors to mainstream studio material,” a strategy that has produced a number of triumphs, including Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and Stephen Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven. It has also produced several major duds, including The Wachowski Brothers’ hyper-stylized, bloated adaptation of the popular kids property Speed Racer. And while they appear to believe they are back on the right track with Wild Things, it is important to note that they created this monster by hiring a director with the ability to bring a unique perspective to the material. It is also interesting to note that there are people out there who would be interested in Jonze’s darker, more intensely frightening version of the film. But that wouldn’t lend well to marketing and box office receipts, would it? Therefore we will get less Spike Jonze and more Alan Horn, and Wild Things with very little bite.

Diatribe over. Lets get back to the real news at hand. This morning Warner Bros. released their official 2009 preview, which includes first look images from a good deal of their ’09 slate. Included in the pack is some official info and photos (none of which are either new or groundbreaking) from Where the Wild Things Are. You will find said info by using your scroll function and peering down below.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
In theatres on October 16

(Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures/Village Roadshow Pictures)

Director: Spike Jonze
Writers: Screenplay by Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers
Based on the book by Maurice Sendak
Producers: Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, Maurice Sendak, John Carls, Vincent Landay
Executive Producers: Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Bruce Berman

Cast: Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker

Adventure. Maurice Sendak’s classic book Where the Wild Things Are comes to the big screen in an adventure tale for every generation.