Netflix Wins Stop Motion Animated ‘Wendell And Wild:’ Henry Selick, Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key Aboard
March 14, 2018
Netflix Wins Stop Motion Animated ‘Wendell And Wild:’ Henry Selick, Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key Aboard
EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his directorial debut Get Out, Jordan Peele is at the center of a most intriguing feature re-team with Keegan-Michael Key, his longtime partner on the Emmy-winning Comedy Central series Key and Peele. Netflix has committed to finance and distribute Wendell And Wild, a stop motion animated feature to be directed by James and the Giant Peach helmer Henry Selick. Key and Peele will supply the voices for two scheming demon brothers. The film will be produced by The Gotham Group and Peele’s Monkeypaw banner.
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Pic is based on an original idea by Selick, the stop motion virtuoso whose other films include Coraline and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Selick is separately developing a television adaptation of the video game Little Nightmares with Joe and Anthony Russo’s AGBO.
Selick is writing the script with Peele and Clay McLeod Chapman. While the movie moves forward, a deal has been made with Simon & Schuster for a book to be written by Chapman and Selick to be published around the film’s release.
Acclaimed Argentinian artist Pablo Lobato will be designing the characters for Wendell And Wild.
This marks the second Netflix foray into a high profile stop motion animated film. Netflix won an auction at last Cannes for the stop motion animated Bubbles, a film about Michael Jackson’s beloved pet chimp. That film is based on Isaac Adamson’s Black List-topping screenplay that is being co-directed by Thor: Ragnarok helmer Taika Waititi and Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox).
Selick is repped by The Gotham Group, Key by UTA and Peele by CAA and Principato-Young.