One month after reports of “Where The Wild Things Are” reshoots and almost two month since WB issued a statement and producer John Carls told EW that “Alvin & The Chipmunks” screenwriter Jon Vitti was requested to make “significant changes” to the script, Warner Bros. have weighed in on the allegedly troubled Spike Jonze directed adaptation on the L.A. Times blog.
The Big Pictures Patrick Goldstein spoke to Warners chief Alan Horn, but his claim this is the first time the studio has offered their side of the story is kind of incorrect, given that they released a statement. Quibbling I guess. Horn denied Jonze was taken off the project (duh, only the hysterical actually believed this), seemed supportive of the fanciful filmmaker, but also made it clear he wants the film to have a wide mainstream appeal.
“We’ve given [Jonze] more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film We’d like to find a common ground that represents Spike’s vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience. We obviously still have a challenge on our hands. But I wouldn’t call it a problem, simply a challenge. No one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a very special piece of material and we’re just trying to get it right.”
Obviously the film has been suffused with drama mostly because of panic-prone bloggers getting all shrill about the rumors, which begat more rumors like a snowball (though to be balanced, the EW report has one anonymous insider call the project “deeply troubled“; but the screenwriter Vitti, actually has a strong and respectable CV).
That’s about all we get. The rest of the piece, Goldstein basically gives Warners a blow job and lauds their marriage of auteurs with big-name projects (ala Chris Nolan with the Batman franchise). “I congratulate Warners for being willing to let daring artists tackle its more conventional material,” he espoused, brandy sniffer in hand, while surrounded by leather bound books in his mahogany-colored study.
Horn agrees with his fawning assessement and can’t agree more (though all joking aside, the ‘jury still out’ comment is a not an cowardly thing to say).
“We try to take a few shots, Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The jury is still out on this one. But we remain confident that Spike is going to figure things out and at the end of the day we’ll have an artistically compelling movie.”
Either way, it sounds like working on it, like we figured they were. We’re sure someone can spin some freak out about this though. We’ve put in the work here though (a bit like Corey Haim has), and many a blog has noticed including one of the other L.A. Times blogs out there. So we’re gonna put it out there: someone should hook us up with the ‘Wild Things’ script (co-penned by Dave Eggers, though maybe even the re-write?) and someone should dare to give us some quotage here too (including one insider who was incredibly annoyed we broke the Karen O soundtrack news although all we really did was open up and read a magazine that failed to put the blurb online; it was out there dude, you know who you are).
One thing we failed to note on Friday when we wrote this (we write too fast and juggle too many things). The film was moved to an October 2009 release date back in February of this year, but Goldstein notes that the film disappeared from the Warner Bros. release schedule just last week, which does point to continuing signs of trouble and or at least suggests that there’s a long way to go before this thing is ready for a proper release.
