According to The Hollywood Reporter, Henry Selick is preparing for the debut of the film Wendell & Wild. He is looking back on why his earlier project, The Shadow King, was never completed by Disney/Pixar.
What's Happening:
- Henry Selick is looking back on why his earlier project, The Shadow King, was never completed by Disney/Pixar.
- Selick had revealed on a podcast for The Hollywood Reporter "I got the rights back. I’ll owe Disney a little bit of money if we set it up, but maybe [it will get made]. I absolutely feel that it would be successful and for the right price, if [a potential partner] likes what I’ve written and wants that movie, rather than think they like it and then want to turn it into Toy Story 8."
- "He really loved the movie, loved what he was seeing, and then they screened Coraline at Pixar and everyone liked it. And they offered me a deal to make a stop-motion film. And it had to be for a much lower budget than the CG films," says Selick. "Stop-motion films have never out of the gate been as successful as big CG films. The best stop-motion films live forever, though. And, as we see with Nightmare, make billions in merchandising."
- "It’s just how all their greatest successes [have been made]. [They] have their brain trust, and they rip things apart, they rebuild, rip things apart, rebuild," says Selick. "He really couldn’t support my vision. He thought he could make it better. And so we kept changing and changing and changing."
- Alan Horn went to Disney as film boss, and the movie was shut down. "Basically, John Lasseter couldn’t help himself. He tried to Disney-fy it until the budget went through the roof. It got shut down, and I was kind of down, I wasn’t sure I was going to make another movie again. But then the Key & Peele show started on Comedy Central, and it was Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele who kind of inspired me to do another film. I loved what they did so much."
- Selick had begun the Wendell & Wild Years earlier in the year, thinking it would be a good project for their vocal talents.
- "It was, what has she faced? What has she lost?" says Selick. "Right up front, we got a PG rating. We asked for that in our deal because we wanted to be able to explore things a little further than most American animated films. There’s a ton of animated films where the kid is an orphan or has lost a parent. There’s not too many where the kid feels responsible for the parent’s death. That’s something new. And that was a tough thing to include, but we felt it was important."