Oct 28, 2021

Netflix Teases Henry Celik's stop-motion feature "Wendell & Wilde"

Twenty-twenty-two is the year Netflix's slate of auteur-led animated features will really take off. Leading the pack is Wendell & Wild, the new movie from stop-motion supremo Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline).

The story follows the demon brothers of the title (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) as they escape the underworld and encounter demon-duster Kat. Netflix has released a teaser (watch below), as well as a live-streamed animated loop of a radio booming out punk tunes.

This is the first film Selick has directed since 2009's Coraline, which he made at Laika. He has been developing it since at least 2015. Key and Peele have been onboard since the start; Peele (Get Out) co-wrote the script with Selick and serves as a producer through his company Monkeypaw Productions.

Selick and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein also produce for The Gotham Group. Sarah Serata co-produces. The executive producers are Win Rosenfeld for Monkeypaw, Peter Principato and Joel Zadak for Principato-Young, and Lindsay Williams and Eddie Gamarra for The Gotham Group. Argentinian artist Pablo Lobato is designing the characters.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last year, Goldsmith-Vein said, “[T]he crew has suffered through fires, most recently, Covid, and a lot of political and social unrest. It's been a very challenging movie. Netflix has been an incredible partner.”

Other animated features on Netflix's slate include Richard Linklater's semi-autobiographical Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure, Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion musical Pinocchio, Aardman's sequel to Chicken Run, Chris Williams' The Sea Beast, Wendy Rogers's The Magician's Elephant, and Minkyu Lee's The Witch Boy.