Having closed the book on their beloved Comedy Central sketch show, Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key are now free to devote their talents to their true calling as entertainers: attaching themselves to movies which may or may not ever actually happen. (Current projects on their hypothetical slate include a movie based on the popular Key & Peele character Mr. Garvey, a Police Academy reboot, and the probably-actually-extant cat-criminal-comedy Keanu.) Their latest flight of filmic fancy is Wendell And Wild, a collaboration with animator and director Henry Selick, the stop-motion mastermind behind lovingly handcrafted films like Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
For those who worry that Selick might have lost his distinctive style in the six years since Coraline’s release, the movie’s premise will hopefully reassure: the title characters are a pair of mischievous demonic brothers, forced to battle against an exorcism-loving nun and her team of plucky Gothic sidekicks. (We can only imagine the way the director started drooling while planning out what kind of stitching he’d use for the buttons on the character’s coats.)
Peele will co-write the film with Selick—at least until the Hollywood winds shift direction, and he and Key are blown, like very funny dandelions, off to another project, far away. (Heaven help us if they ever land near Guillermo Del Toro, as the resulting combination of massive potential and abysmal chance to actually get it realized might break our hearts for good.)