Where the Wild Things Are Little", features a spoof of "Where the Wild Things Are" entitled "The Land of the Wild Beasts". The live-action film version of the book is directed by Spike Jonze. It was released on October 16, 2009. The film stars Max Records as Max and features Catherine Keener as his mother, with Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara and Forest Whitaker providing the voices of the principal Wild Things. The soundtrack was written and produced by Karen O and Carter Burwell. The screenplay was adapted by Jonze and Dave Eggers. Sendak was one of the producers for
Where the Wild Things Are be that of a child who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous "Wild Things", a term inspired by the Yiddish expression "vilde chaya" ("wild animals"), used to indicate boisterous children. He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that he had originally drawn in his youth