By Andrew Romano
It sounds like an impossible mission: adapting a beloved 10-sentence picture book into a big-budget Hollywood film. One, there’s not much source material to draw on. Two, anything you add is guaranteed to upset readers who have treasured the versions they imagined since childhood. But for the team behind Where The Wild Things Are—director Spike Jonze, co-screenwriter Dave Eggers, and author Maurice Sendak—these challenges were liberating. Blending old-school craft with high-tech innovation, they have created a movie that preserves the essence of Sendak’s classic picture book—the twinned feelings of freedom and fear that define childhood—while still managing to strike out in new directions. A behind-the-scenes peak at how they pulled it off with some images exclusive to NEWSWEEK
