After more than a decade, Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) is back with a new stop-motion horror comedy. The first trailer for Wendell & Wild, made with Jordan Peele and Netflix, has been unleashed and shows Peele combining his talents at both horror and comedy.
Netflix's Wendell & Wild is the first film in 13 years by Henry Selick, director of the beloved stop motion horror films Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. While it is made from a screenplay co-written by Selick and Jordan Peele (Get Out, Nope), it is adapted from an unpublished book that Selick wrote with Clay McLeod Chapman (Beyond White Space).
In Wendell & Wild's first trailer Kat, a 13-year-old girl, is plagued by disturbing dreams. In one dream she meets two demons, Wendell (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (voiced by Jordan Peele), who ask her to summon them to the land of the living. Once she does so, however, it seems she may have unleashed more than she can handle. The film boasts Selick's characteristically beautiful stop-motion and plenty of creepy imagery, including ghosts, skeletons, and ghouls. The look of the movie is very reminiscent of his beloved previous films.
Wendell & Wild feels almost like a return to roots for Peele, who stars alongside his frequent comedy partner Keegan-Michael Key. The two first became famous on the sketch comedy TV series Mad TV and then on Key & Peele. Starting in 2016, however, Peele transitioned into work as a filmmaker by writing, producing, and starring in the buddy comedy film Keanu. The following year he skyrocketed to success by directing the smash hit horror film Get Out—which raked in a massive $255 million on a budget of $4.5 million. After following this up with Us and Nope, Peele has become one of the most highly respected directors working today.
Although it's unusual to see him return to his sketch comedy roots after all his massive directorial success, it makes sense. He signed on to Selick's project in 2015, before he had even made his first venture into film with Keanu. Because the film has taken so long to complete, we'll get another taste of Jordan Peele's sketch comedy skills which he rarely flexes these days. Preliminary reviews are largely positive, with many praising Selick's direction, the stop-motion animation, and the characters. It holds a 95% positivity rate on RottenTomatoes and a 71 out of 100 on Metacritic.
Wendell & Wild releases on October 28 on Netflix.