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When that alleged clip from Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are hit the internets earlier this week, the reactions to the footage varied widely. Even though we loved it, a barrage of negative feedback almost immediately began taking root in the comment sections of many blogs who covered the leak ("a piece of crap," said a Movieweb reader; "looks like a car crash," said a Gawker commenter). The furor caused Jonze to make a statement defending his highly-anticipated project:

That was a very early test with the sole purpose of just getting some footage to Ben our vfx (visual effects) supervisor to see if our vfx plan for the faces would work. The clip doesn't look or feel anything like the movie, the Wild Thing suit is a very early cringy prototype, and the boy is a friend of ours Griffin who we had used in a Yeah Yeah Yeahs video we shot a few weeks before. We love him, but he is not in the actually film...Oh and that is not a wolf suit, its a lamb suit we bought on the internet. Talk to you later..."

Despite his assurances and excuses, he has bigger fish to fry than bloggers and their readers; Slashfilm is also reporting that Things test screenings are scaring the kiddies! After hearing feedback from their target audience, the "extremely unhappy" execs at Warner Brothers are reportedly pushing the film's release date to 2009. What could be so scary that kids are crying and begging their parents to go home mid-film? Said one tester, "The things are not cute. Max comes off a bit weird and off-putting. He slaps his mom! And he seems confused and not charming at all." Stranger still, IMDB has an actor named Max Records listed for the role, which may explain all the tears. Apparently Records once "led a protest for vegetarian options at his school cafeteria" at 8 years old. Now that is scary.

[Photo Credit: SlashFilm]