Jordan Peele thought Get Out would kill Henry Selick’s new movie Wendell & Wild

Given how long it takes to make a stop-motion movie — and how long it takes to persuade a studio to produce one — it’s no surprise that stop-motion specialist Henry Selick disappears for years at a time between projects. Director of Christmas Nightmare, MonkeyboneAnd James and The Giant Peach Has spent all of the time since Neil Gaiman’s 2009 adaptation Coraline There have been a number of stop-motion animation projects abandoned or put on hold. Netflix revealed Tuesday his long-in-the-making stop-motion animated movie. Wendell & WildThe streaming service will launch a new version of, on October 28th.

Wendell & WildThe comedy stars Jordan Peele and Keegan Michael Key as long-time comedian partners. They play Wendell (a low-level demon brother) who lives and works in a hell-themed park that is entirely based on Ving Rhames’ voice. Wild and Wendell dream of opening their own theme park, which would be better for the rest of us mortals. The trio team up to create a new theme park with Kat Lyric Ross, 13, a troubled teenager who can summon demons.

A visit to Wendell & Wild Polygon discovered that Selick had the original idea for the film through his children in April. “Wendell & Wild started out as a short story I did many, many years ago, inspired by my sons, who are now grown,” he says. “When they were little, I did a picture of them as demons. Sometimes they were somewhat demonic. And I wrote a story about it and shared it with some people, but then I put it away.”

Selick later shares that he was a big fan of sketch-comedy shows years later. Key & Peele. “I was so impressed by their work,” he says. “I just said, What the hell, I’ll reach out. They probably don’t know who I am.However, I was keen to collaborate with them. I’m not known for comedy in my films, [though] I think there’s always comedic elements. This was something I wanted. [to work] with them and bring what they do into a project that I’m on.”

According to Selick, Key and Peele both were open to a joint project and Jordan Peele wanted to collaborate. Selick also mentioned the brief story about the twin demon-brothers. “It seemed like a Key & PeeleThey could almost be brothers or sisters who are demons but possess human weaknesses and desires. So I shared my pages and talked it through, and he got really excited and basically said, ‘I want to be involved creatively. I’d like to be a producer.’ Monkeypaw was his first company. And that’s really the genesis of the project.”

Image by Netflix

Selick says he originated the basic characters of the story, but that Peele “added all sorts of great things to characters in the story,” particularly in shaping Kat, a Black girl who ends up in the juvenile justice system for acting out after her parents die. Peele and Selick were prepared to pitch the movie to the production studios once the character and early plans were complete. But Selick says he had to talk Peele down from his anxiety over the premiere of Peele’s directorial debut, the 2017 horror-thriller Move Out.

“Two weeks before his first feature film, Move OutHe stated that the release was imminent. [highly agitated Jordan Peele impression] ‘We gotta go out and pitch it now! It’s not a good idea to wait, but what if it happens? Move Out’s a failure?’ I said, ‘Look, look, you’re too nervous to do this. You just have to trust it’s gonna work out.’”

Selick claims he was aware Wendell & Wildit was going to be an unusual, offbeat project. “We weren’t going to pitch it everywhere. Only a select few. Netflix being the number one place we felt would give us creative support for something unusual, and that would also support a stop-motion film, because stop-motion has always been the stepchild of the animation industry.”

Selick points out that his medium, which is profitable, can be more difficult to sell. Studios like Portland’s Laika — which produced Selick’s CoralineShe specializes in Stop-motion Movies like Kubo & the Two Strings — are extremely rare. They also don’t have the kind of marketing budget and reach that help CG movies from majors like Disney, Pixar, and Illumination reach billion-dollar paydays worldwide. (By contrast, Coraline made about $125 million back in 2009 — respectable for a small animated film, just not Disney-level money.)

But Selick says having an ally in Peele helped, particularly given how Peele’s anxiety over his own debut film eventually paid off: “Then there’s the best part: Move Out is this amazing hit, because it’s such a good film. And then suddenly, all doors are open.”

Wendell & WildThe premiere of the series will air on Netflix Oct. 28.