If there’s one thing we’ve learned in all of the highs and lows of the production of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, it’s that this right here is how to faithfully adapt a book. From the very beginning, the movie was a passion project that saw the director working closely with the book’s author Maurice Sendak to make it a beautiful and fitting adaptation, while also making it his own. This pure love for the material is showing in what we’ve seen so far, and the movie is shaping up to be something truly, truly special.

The Wild Things crew made an appearance at the recent San Diego Comic Con as part of the gigantic Warner Brothers panel, and while the panel didn’t have any big announcements or anything like that, they did bring a lot of wonderful footage and videos to watch. The clips were introduced by young Max Records, who plays Max in the film. The boy came out and stood strong, though he was a little nervous, which lead him to write some things on his hands so he didn’t forget. The one thing that stuck out was a great quote he relayed from Sendak that said: “You know I really love this movie and I hope people like it, because if not they can all go straight to hell.” They played three new clips from the movie with stuff we haven’t seen — mainly an extended look at some of the very brief clips that we saw in the first official trailer. They show more from the scene where Carol (James Gandolfini) is carrying Max, and also the scene where the Wild Things are chucking each other all over the place.

Click on over for more and a cool video that was shown that features a look at both Jonze and Sendak.

It seems to be the consensus among all who saw this footage that Where the Wild Things Are just keeps looking better and better and the movie really just can’t arrive fast enough.

Also shown at the panel was this new video that shows director Spike Jonze and author Maurice Sendak talking about the project and their collaboration of sorts — basically, the living, breathing evolution of Where the Wild Things Are. The video also shows a lot of footage and behind the scenes goodies we haven’t seen yet.

Watching this makes me not only just excited about the movie, but also all of the special features that we’re sure to get when the DVD is released. The behind the scenes shots look like they really had a great time making this movie and I love watching making of specials for a movie.

It’s movies like this that look so well-done that you hope to see it turn out so well that they’re showered in Oscar nominations. Sadly, this is the type of movie that doesn’t get much attention past the technical awards for effects, costumes, music, and sound.

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