Haven’t had a chance to get your mitts on Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze’s “Where The Wild Things Are” screenplay, but still want to know some secrets about the film before it’s released on October 16 later this year?
Your best bet to getting the 411 on the movie before it comes out, is buying Eggers’ sort-of novelization of the picture called, “The Wild Things” which is due October 1 via McSweeney‘s (first announced in February of 2008).
The 300 page is an amalgam of the book and script and “based loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay cowritten with Spike Jonze,” according to Amazon that already has the book up for pre-sale (there’s also a fur-covered edition, but there’s no artwork to that one yet). It’s also apparently for ages 9-12, but that probably won’t stop us from buying it.
Here’s the Amazon synopsis:
The Wild Things based loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay co-written with Spike Jonze — is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can’t control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, his sister is becoming a teenager and no longer has interest in him. At the same time, Max finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: he wears a wolf suit, bites his mom, and can’t always control his outbursts. During a fight at home, Max flees and runs away into the woods. He finds a boat there, jumps in, and ends up on the open sea, destination unknown. He lands on the island of the Wild Things, and soon he becomes their king. But things get complicated when Max realizes that the Wild Things want as much from him as he wants from them. Funny, dark, and alive, The Wild Things is a timeless and time-tested tale for all ages.
We won’t be surprised if this novel is very similar to the screenplay, because there’s lots of great context, color and emotion in the screenplay— written unorthodoxly, very much like a book as it is — that’s hard to capture concretely onscreen unless you’re dealing with the greatest of actors. Apparently in a 2007 interview with the Montreal Gazette (via /Film). Eggers said, “The movie is 90 minutes,” which is about right for a kids movie, an hour and half tops, but then again that was two years ago and the running time may have changed (and at that point Eggers might have been guesstimating your average running time). ‘Wild Things’ hits theaters October 16.