"Where the Wild Things Are", the much troubled $80 million film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic child fantasy book, has been pulled off the release schedule.

The Spike Jonze-directed feature hit trouble in December last year when a test screening allegedly caused quite a few young audience members to break out in tears and screams of fright. The film was pushed back a whole year to October 2009 soon after.

Talk then turned toward something more frightening - that Jonze would be kicked off the project and replaced with someone else who'd reshoot and re-edit his dark and unique vision (which is what the original work was) into something more commercial and family friendly.

Alan Horn has now denied rumors of Jonze being replaced, telling the Los Angeles Times that "We've given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film. We'd like to find a common ground that represents Spike's vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience...we remain confident that Spike is going to figure things out and at the end of the day we'll have an artistically compelling movie."

No word yet as to when the project will be moved forward, but with the absorption of over a dozen New Line films into their schedule it's expected that the studio is in no hurry to have this out earlier than late next year.