Where the Wild Things Are trailer

Yesterday, the first trailer for Where The Wild Things Are was released and I must say, I'm blown away.

The long-awaited adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's story has been in development for years and has been on the shelf for quite some time as well. What makes this film so interesting to me is the culmination of incredible artists helping bring Sendak's story to life.

What first made me interested in this film was that Spike Jonze was shooting this adaptation. Spike Jonze has had such an incredible, amazingly diverse career so far. Jonze has directed some of the greatest music videos of all time. If you haven't seen his legendary videos for Weezer's "Buddy Holly", Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice", Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Y Control" or any of his many other now classics, stop reading right now and go to YouTube and check them out. He helped turn music videos from just showing viewers the band they love to listen to, to turning music videos actually into art.

Jonze went on to make two of the most revolutionary films of the past decade with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation., showing how incredibly he was able to transport his talents to film. He even helped create MTV's fantastic "Jackass" and the subsequent movies. But after Adaptation., the question was, what will this young auteur do next?
Since Adaptation. was released, Jonze was offered the chance to direct The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Memoirs of a Geisha, Synecdoche, New York and was even in talks to direct Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. But Jonze decided against it to develop instead this pet project, adapting a live action version of Where the Wild Things Are.

The film starting shooting in 2005, yet once it was completed, the studio did not like his vision that in initial screenings, actually scared children. There was even discussion about re-filming the entire movie do make it more accessible to a wider audience, which makes you ask, what did they expect from Jonze?

The cast is also incredible. I dare you to look at the young Max Records (above) and not think about the story and see the young Max from the original book. It looks like he just jumped off the page. The cast is rounded out with some incredible actors, including Catherine Keener of Being John Malkovich. Playing the "wild things" are Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine), James Gandolfini ( HBO's "The Sopranos), Catherine O' Hara (Home Alone) and Lauren Ambrose (HBO's "Six Feet Under"). So the cast is pretty incredible. Author Dave Eggers, who also wrote this summer's Away We Go, has adapted the screenplay and the music is done by frequent Coen brothers musician Carter Burwell, who did No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading. Also, helping him with the original music is Karen O, of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. So obviously, this cast is a pretty big deal.

From the trailer, the film does look fairly dark, yet no more than I would say Coraline or any film like that. The "wild things" look amazing: people in nine feet tall suits with CGI faces make for some adorable creatures.

We'll probably be hearing a ton about this film for all the aforementioned reasons before it comes out on October 16th. But honestly, this trailer makes me freaking excited. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you are as excited as me.