Image: Netflix
Set a note on your calendars this Halloween — Netflix has dropped the full trailer for Wendell & Wild, a spooky upcoming animated movie co-written and produced by director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and Jordan Peele (Nope, Get Out).
Peele stars alongside comedic partner Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele) as the titular characters, a pair of demon brothers who trick troubled orphan Kat Elliott (played by This Is Us star Lyric Ross) into summoning them to the land of the living, resulting in exactly the kind of mayhem you’d expect from a children’s dark horror-comedy. Selick will also direct the movie, making this his first feature film since Coraline (2009).
Image: Netflix
Key and Peele will play the titular Wendell and Wild, a pair of demon brothers who will likely make life rather difficult for our hero, Kat Elliott.
Angela Bassett (Black Panther), James Hong (Kung Fu Panda), and Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) round out the all-star cast for this stop-motion feature in which it seems Kat will both literally and figuratively fight her demons to save the world — or at the very least, her classmates. The stylized stop-motion animation is a welcome throwback to other Selick-directed movies, having a similar gloomy vibe to works made by Laika, an animation studio that worked alongside Selick on both Coraline and Moongirl. While the similarities in style are uncanny, Laika isn’t affiliated with Wendell & Wild, which is just one of several stop-motion animation projects we know are coming to Netflix, such as Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023).
Wendell & Wild will arrive at select US theaters on October 21st before its Netflix streaming premiere on October 28th.