Before we go any further, let’s discuss reshoots. There’s a prevailing
thought that reshoots mean a movie is in trouble. This just isn’t true;
Woody Allen schedules reshoots on every one of his films because he
understands that once he gets into editing he may discover things that
he’d like to explore further, he may find little gaps that can be
easily filled with a new scene or line of dialog and that he may see
that some scenes and performances need to be tweaked when viewed in the
grand scheme of the whole picture. The filmmaking process doesn’t end
once you have a picture wrap. The studio publicists call this
‘additional shooting,’ and I really believe that it can be vital and a
regular part of making movies.
That said, a month of reshoots is almost certainly a sign of major
trouble. And that’s just what will be happening on Spike Jonze’s Where
the Wild Things Are this June. Months ago we broke the story that
Jonze’s film was causing a stir among the suits at Warner Bros and
Legendary Pictures. They weren’t happy with the tone of the movie, and
supposedly they weren’t happy with Max Records, the child actor cast as
the lead character, Max. There were also problems with animating the
Wild Things’ faces, and I speculated that this would be the spin we got
as to why massive reshoots would be needed.
Now those reshoots are here, and they’re going from June 5 to 30th,
according to Bloody Disgusting. The site reports that the production is
looking for stand ins to be involved in the reshoots, and that they’ll
be happening here in Los Angeles, a place that looks quite different
from Australia, where the rest of the film was shot. That could be an
argument that the reshoots will be all green screen work, doing
something to replace the Wild Things’ heads with new ones that can be
animated (I’m just guessing here, as I don’t know enough about any of
that process to give you a real insight).
As of now all we have is one sketchy report. I’ll be following up on it
in the coming days, hitting the CHUD phone to try and find out the
truth. Hopefully the truth can be found at Dr. Susan Block’s phone sex
therapy line, as that’s the only number the CHUD phone can call.