Wendell & Wild

Selick began developing his stop-motion animation feature with Key and Peele set to star in November 2015. The distributor rights were picked up by Netflix in March 2018. Other voice cast were confirmed in March 2022. Production was done remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, with filming taking place in Portland, Oregon.

It premiered at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2022, was released in select cinemas on October 21, 2022, and made its streaming release in Netflix on October 28, 2022. It received generally positive reviews from critics who welcomed Selick’s return and praised its stop-motion animation and characters, but criticized its screenplay. The film is dedicated to Mark Musumeci, an electricity consultant who worked on almost all of Selick’s previous stop-motion features since The Nightmare Before Christmas, who died during production.

Five years later, Kat is an embittered, punk rock-loving thirteen year old juvenile delinquent who blames herself for her parents’ deaths. Kat is enrolled in Rust Bank’s all-girls Catholic school, headed by Father Bests. A trio of preppy classmates attempt to befriend Kat. The group is led by Siobhan Klaxon, whose parents Lane and Irmgard’s private prison company Klaxon “Klax” Korp has taken over the town. Kat unintentionally endears herself to Siobhan by saving her from a falling brick, which she anticipated through premonition, a power that shocks her. Later, she meets Raúl Cocolotl, a trans boy who was once friends with Siobhan and the one who accidentally broke the brick that nearly landed on the latter’s head. Raúl’s mother, Marianna, is convinced the Klaxons are the reason the brewery burned down and caused it to kill all of its workers. During a class taught by Sister Helley, Kat receives a marking on her hand resembling a skull when she approached Helley’s desk, which Helley tells her she must hide and tell no one. The mark alerts Wendell and Wild from a possessed stuffed-bear called Bearzebub, identifying Kat as their “hell maiden”, and they appear to her in a dream and make an empty promise to revive her parents (though demons can’t resurrect the dead), if she summons them to the world of the living.

Kat steals Bearzebub from Helley’s desk so she can use it to summon Wendell and Wild. Helley, once a hell maiden herself, works with the school’s janitor and secret demon hunter, Manberg, who hunts demons and keeps them in jars. Father Bests is revealed to be in league with the Klaxons, who kill him as the last witness to their factory fire. After his funeral, Kat recruits Raúl as her witness to summon the demon brothers, who brought their father’s hair cream with them after they discovered that it can bring dead organisms back to life. However, by the taking the wrong way, the brothers appear in a different part of the cemetery, and Kat believes she has been stood up.

Wendell and Wild test the cream on Bests, who comes back to life and convinces the Klaxons to pay the brothers to revive the deceased members of the town council, which will give the Klaxons the votes they need to demolish Rust Bank and expand their prisons. Though the Klaxons fear they could resurrect other people in the cemetery, such as the brew workers that died in the fire, and other witnesses to the brewery arson, they tell Wendell and Wild that if they revive Kat’s parents or any other dead people, they won’t pay for their fair or for the school. Bests returns to school, and Kat confronts the brothers, who make her vow to serve them forever in exchange for her parents’ resurrection but it is just a ruse to make sure that they won’t resurrect anyone in the cemetery. Forced to dig up the council members, whom Wendell and Wild revive, Raúl steals the cream and revives Delroy and Wilma himself. Reunited with her parents, Kat helps Raúl escape the brothers.

After the zombie council approves the Klaxons’ plans and pay Bests, Wendell, and Wild with a bag full of money, Siobhan discovers her parents’ lies about the conditions of their prisons. Helley and Manberg make Kat undergo a ritual called soul binding, confronting her memories and severing her allegiance with Wendell and Wild, resulting in her accepting the fact that her parents’ death was not her fault. The soul binding ritual further gives Kat the control of her precognitive powers, which Helley reveals are a consequence of her status as a hell maiden. After learning of their resurrection, Bests, Wendell, and Wild kidnap Delroy and Wilma and take them to the cemetery to kill them until Kat, Raúl, Helley, and Manberg stop them, where Siobhan, who followed her pet pygmy goat Gabby Goat to the cemetery, reveals that her parents paid Bests, Wendell, and Wild worthless company money. Buffalo Belzer appears, having discovered Wendell and Wild’s deception, but a mural painted by Raúl as his art project, depicting his mother Marianna, as a mighty Mayan warrior, defending and protecting a baby Raúl against a two-headed dragon (representing the Klaxons) painted part-by-part on every house’s roof in Rust Bank, convinces him to make up with his sons. Manberg releases his collection of jarred demons after learning they are Belzer’s children in exchange for Kat and the others. Belzer apologizes to Wendell and Wild, approving their plans for their Dream Fair. Bests dies again, and Belzer explains that the cream’s effects “don’t last.”

Kat says it’s too late to save Rust Bank, but Sister Helley tells her that her power to see into the future can help her change it. Recalling that Raúl said there needs to be a witness to prove the Klaxons are guilty, Kat tells him to use the very last bit of cream to revive as many dead brew workers as he can. The group fends off the bulldozers conducted by the zombie council set to demolish the town while Raúl revives three dead factory workers to testify to the Klaxons’ crimes, resulting in their arrest. The cream’s effect begin to wear off on Delroy and Wilma, but before they die, Kat uses her precognition to give them a glimpse of the future where Rust Bank is revived, and Wendell and Wild offer them VIP passes to their afterlife fair. Kat makes peace with her life, considering everyone her friends, even Wendell and Wild themselves.

In a post-credits scene, one of the production members finds an anthropomorphic model of Kat walking around his office desk.