Maurice Sendak Insists Spike Jonze Didn't Screw Up Wild Things

For all the public concern that has followed Where the Wild Things Are over years of development and production, Warner Bros. has to be pretty happy with the goodwill it managed to accrue last weekend at Comic-Con. But even some critics' observations that WTWTA was "the most beautiful thing we have seen" during this year's event haven't prevented Warner from enlisting author Maurice Sendak himself to defuse any lingering skepticism. Watch him make his case after the jump.

In a video first screened at the WTWTA panel and now being distributed online by Warners, the author talks to Jonze himself about the resistance his original book received upon its release in 1963: commercial failures, critical drubbings, bannings and at least two years' worth of underrecognition before readers finally seemed to not only get it, but also enjoy it.

Of course, the studio and filmmaker don't have that kind of time with the movie. Thus Sendak's rich praise of Jonze, whose own vision and loyalty to the material deserve a break going in, maybe even an endorsement: "He's a real artist that lets it come through the work," Sendak assures us. "So he's touched me very much."

Great! It's one of the most hyper-sensitive studio defense initiatives I've ever seen, but who among us is going to call Maurice Sendak a liar? Now he's just got to convince this kid, and we're on to something.

[via Cinematical]