'Where the Wild Things Are': Good News, Depressing News

In case you haven't been following the disheartening saga of Where the Wild Things Are and its production woes, the rumor that's been going around for months is that director Spike Jonze's creative vision didn't match the studio's blander, Happy Meal toy-friendly ideals, leading to reshoots, delays, and questions of whether we'd ever see Jonze's cut. But here's some reasonably positive news from CHUD:

Good news: Gary says that Spike has final cut. And that Playtone is standing behind him. "There was an Alan Horn conversation where he said his vision and Spike's vision weren't on the same page," Goetzman said. "We support Spike's vision. We're helping him make the vision he wants to make."
Goetzman does cop to technical problems on the picture - "Spike wanted to do things low tech. He wanted big animatronic Wild Things in the jungle, which look great. As you go deeper in the jungle and weather sets in... We misjudged that, production-wise."
He dismissed rumors that the film isn't kid friendly. "Kids are much smarter than [the studio types] think," Goetzman said. "Spike won't talk down to kids. He's got a kid's soul."

Man, why do studios have to be such a-holes? Unsurprisingly, the answer is because the studios are run largely by a-holes.