Where The Wild Things Are (film)

Where The Wild Things Are (film)

Where the Wild Things Are is a 2009 fantasy drama film directed by Spike Jonze and adapted from Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's book Where the Wild Things Are. It combines live action, performers in costumes, animatronics, and computer-generated imagery (CGI). The film stars Max Records, and features the voices of James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Lauren Ambrose, Forest Whitaker, Catherine O'Hara, and Chris Cooper. The film centers around a lonely eight-year-old boy named Max who sails away to an island inhabited by creatures known as the "Wild Things", who declare Max their king.

In the early 1980s, Disney considered adapting the film as a blend of traditionally animated characters and computer-generated settings, but development did not go past a test film to see how the animation hybridizing would work out. In 2001, Universal Studios acquired rights to the book's adaptation and initially attempted to develop a computer-animated adaptation with Disney animator Eric Goldberg, but the CGI concept was replaced with a live-action one in 2003, and Goldberg was dropped for Spike Jonze. The film was co-produced by actor Tom Hanks through his production company Playtone and made on an estimated budget of around $100,000,000.

The film was released on October 16, 2009, in the United States, and on December 11, 2009, in the United Kingdom. The film was met with mostly critical acclaim and appeared on many year-end top ten lists. The film was released to DVD and Blu-ray on March 2, 2010.