Although information about the upcoming Netflix stop-motion animated film Wendell & Wild is still scarce at the moment, the streamer is likely to begin releasing additional details (including a full trailer) soon in honour of the new Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) movie, which has landed its release date today. We normally wouldn’t take advantage of such a golden opportunity to interview an Academy Award winner, but being as how this particular one has finally emerged from retirement after 13 years to make a new feature picture, we just couldn’t pass it up. Alyse Wax stopped by the Wendell & Wild set and had a chat with director Henry Selick, who mentioned that his next film might not take as long to make as everyone had feared.
And considering the origins and the people directly engaged, it’s clear that it has enormous potential: I’m working on something very fantastic. I managed to get 50 pages down on paper. People keep saying they want to do it in CG, and I keep saying, “Well, I don’t bring anything to the table” since it’s based on a Neil Gaiman novel, and it’s his finest one. Actually, that’s not what it is that I do. And so, we shall see how that develops. The “best book” is, of course, a very relative term. American Gods, Good Omens, Stardust, and Coraline, adapted by Selick himself, are among the works of Gaiman that have already made it to the big screen, and they are widely regarded as some of his greatest.
The films listed above are all very new, so it’s conceivable that the director is referring to a lost classic like Neverwhere or a brand-new adaptation like The Graveyard Book (which was announced earlier this year with Marc Forster scheduled to direct). Since Gaiman is a writer whose works have been in high demand over the past several years, this is the sort of undertaking that may quickly gather traction. The Sandman, widely regarded as Gaiman’s masterwork, was recently adapted for the film by Netflix, despite longstanding fan doubts. On top of that, a Prime Video series based on Gaiman’s best-selling novel Anansi Boys starring Whoopi Goldberg is presently in production (The Color Purple). After being condemned to an eternity of listening to a goth playlist on a boombox, Wendell and Wild’s protagonists, two demon brothers, seek to make their way back into the world of the living.
However, in order to ensure that the demons are sent to Hell, they must first defeat a demon-fighting nun. Oscar-winning writer-director Jordan Peele (Get Out) and screenwriter Clay McLeod Chapman collaborated on the film (Beyond White Space). Quite a few famous actors lend their voices to Wendell & Wild, including Keegan-Michael Key, Angela Bassett, Lyric Ross, Sam Zelaya, James Hong, Tamara Smart, Natalie Martinez, Tantoo Cardinal, Igal Naor, Gary Gatewood, Gabrielle Dennis, David Harewood, Maxine Peake, Ramona Young, Seema Virdi, and Ving Rhames. The streamer originally introduced the characters of this new frightening realm in a July cast reveal teaser.