After years of waiting, the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved book Where The Wild Things Are is finally being released. Veteran music and skate video director, Spike Jonze, has become famous for his reality bending style with Hollywood movies Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, so, it was exciting news to hear that he would be tackling the childrens classic. the problem is, this news is 4 years old! People familiar with his surreal brand of story telling had no problem trusting that Jonze could transform a relatively wordless and vary short illustrated book into a 2 hour film worthy of the same Oscar praise bestowed upon his prior releases. You see, the beauty of Oscar love is that a studio will jump behind whatever that film maker wants to do next. But what happens when they don't like the result? Jonze has spent years dealing with that dilemma.

Blogs have all reported the various assumed reasons behind the delay. The news included rumors that newcomer and child star of the film, Max Records, was ultimately unlikable on screen and that jonze's decision to shun computer FX for the wild things in place of people in monster suits (with CG faces) was a disaster that called for numerous reshoots. My favorite of the rumors that I actually hope is true is the one about children leaving an advance test screening with tears in their eyes from fear. The suits at the studio supposedly demanded a more family friendly film from the director to replace the dark tale of self discovery depicted in the first draft. It has been stated that Sendak loved this first edit feeling it was true to the essence of the story. For all unfamiliar with the book, an unruly child named Max, dressed in his favorite wolf pajamas, is sent to bed with no dinner, at which time his imagination (or is it reality) transorms his room into a jungle and transports him to the land of the wild things who make him their king.

Will the Wild Things be tamed for a Shrek worthy audience or will it maintain the depth intended by Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggars? An October release date has been set and the offical trailer has been released.

ALSO: check out the leaked test footage that set the production up for some of the bad rumors + a cool computer generated test animation from Disney circa 1983 from the team that eventually became Pixar.

- The Big Ragu aka Movie Geek

The unfortunately leaked test footage of Spike Jonze production.

Spike was simply trying to test lighting and various other technicalities by using a random child and a pre-production version of a Wild Thing suit.  When leaked, people quickly rushed to pan the production as a failure, assuming this was actually production footage.  The clue that it isn't is that the child is wearing a lamb costume, not a wolf costume.