Between rats, cockroaches and slow walkers, New York City isn’t wanting for pests. But thanks to New York Comic Con, the Big Apple had a new kind of infestation on its hands: a demonic one. Henry Selick stopped by the Javits Center on Saturday to preview his ghoulish new stop-motion story Wendell & Wild, and he gave the NYCC audience a glimpse into the world of the damned. 

Much like Kat, the orphaned teen who accidentally summons the titular demonic pair voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, we had a lot to learn. Here are the five biggest takeaways from the Wendell & Wild panel, from behind-the-scenes stories to a few new plot details you won’t want to miss. 

1. On working with Jordan Peele
The inspiration for Wendell & Wild came from an unexpected place: the Comedy Central sketch show Key & Peele. “I was so inspired by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele and their range of subjects, characters,” Selick told moderator Tiffany Smith at the NYCC panel. “By the third season I just said, I gotta reach out to those guys.” When he did, he got even more than he bargained for; Peele revealed he loved stop-motion, and the pair started collaborating on Wendell & Wild.

Peele helped shape the project from its original form as a seven-page story Selick wrote for his two sons. Crucially, Peele pushed for young protagonist Kat to be a person of color. “Jordan said that when he was a kid it really upset him to go see animated films and there was nobody on the screen that looked like him,” Selick said. “That sort of unlocked the door to casting, design and look for the whole film.”

Not surprisingly, Key and Peele brought their hilarious comedic dynamic to the project as well. “There's definitely two Grammy-winning comedy albums in just the outtakes,” Selick said. Give us the outtakes, Henry!

Go Behind the Dazzling Animation of Wendell & WildEvery frame looks like a diorama and a painting at the same time.

2. On the stacked cast
Selick likened casting for a film to bringing together a band. “What are the best instruments?” he said. “You start with who you know you're going to work with, and then you kind of build the cast around that so that, even if they weren't saying words and just making sounds, that it would still sound good.” With a cast like this, it would most definitely sound good no matter what: alongside Key and Peele, the film stars Angela Bassett, James Hong, Ving Rhames and Lyric Ross as Kat herself. 

“Whose voice is part of our social fabric that even babies, they've heard the voice and they have a connection to it?” Selick asked. “That’s what you get with classic voices.” 

3. On the film’s musical pedigree 
Wendell & Wild isn’t a musical, but Selick and Peele consciously chose a sonic aesthetic for Kat to cling to: that of the burgeoning Afropunk movement. “Jordan and I were looking to do something very different,” Selick said. They turned to Afropunk, which harkens back to what Selick calls “the first generation of Black and brown punk music.” Kat became a punk rocker, all leather jackets and booming stereos. “It started out as just a look and then it turned into something much more important,” Selick said. “It turned out to be this emotional connection between Kat and her dad, who was a first-gen superfan of those bands and gave her mixtapes.”

Ironically enough, Selick himself has an unlikely connection to those same bands — in 1985 he directed a music video, “Party at Ground Zero,” for ska band Fishbone. “I know it's crazy, but that's how my life is,” he chuckled.

Lyric Ross Creates Kat's Voice for Wendell & WildLyric Ross goes into the booth to voice act some of Kat's best lines.

4. On balancing the story’s themes
Selick’s films are comedies aimed at a younger audience, but they also have their fair share of frights. Even Selick knows he can walk a little bit on the wild side. “Coraline’s pretty intense,” he laughed. “I don’t know how we got that PG rating!” Even by his standards, though, Wendell & Wild is a tall order: a demonic horror comedy that tackles everything from bereavement to the criminal justice system. 

Fortunately, Selick had a writing partner as well-versed in the tricky balance between horror and comedy as he was. “This is balancing so many different layers,” Selick continued. “Jordan in particular was so helpful at knowing when we're making a point of something that doesn't need to be made.” In the Venn diagram between the pair’s horror styles, they found the perfect window to make Wendell & Wild really sing. “He's making horror for ostensibly an older audience and I'm making horror for a little bit younger,” Selick said. “But there's a certain overlap. Just how much do we turn up the dial for each scene?”

5. On weathering the storms of production 
Stop-motion is a famously laborious method of animation, but even for Selick the production of Wendell & Wild made for a true challenge. “Somebody did not want us to finish this movie, but we did,” he said at the panel. Between a Portland, Oregon heat dome and the pandemic, Wendell & Wild faced many challenges. At one particularly frightening moment, the crew had to evacuate in the face of forest fires — along with some precious cargo. “We had to evacuate all the puppets,” Selick said. “We figured if the studio burns, we could still make the movie if we still had our little actors.”

But whatever demonic force was trying to shut down the production of Wendell & Wild for good, they didn’t bet on the hard work and commitment of lifelong animators. “What's stop motion?” Selick asked. “The most intense, labor intensive form to bring characters to life. We are relentless. We have infinite patience. They figure, this’ll take ‘em out. Uh uh. Only death.” Sounds like something Wendell and Wild might agree with.

Wendell & Wild hits select theaters around the US on Oct. 21, and Netflix on Oct. 28.