“The beast with two backs,” get it?

When I first heard about Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a movie about a grown-up Hansel and Gretel who go around shooting witches, from Will Ferrell’s production company and the director of Nazi zombie movie Død Snø (Tommy Wirkola), I thought it sounded like a perfect parody of the “dark fairy tale” trend – see Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, The Raven, et al. Hell, it was so accurate a parody, Michael Bay’s production company announced plans for a dark Hansel and Gretel movie around the same time. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, and was originally scheduled for release March, 2012, which has since been pushed to January 25th, 2013. The red-band trailer is below, and my parody assumption may have just been wishful thinking, because it seems schlocky, but mostly pretty straightforward.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was 2009 when we first heard about Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a film starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, whose plot you can guess from the title. If it was a Michael Bay or Paul WS Anderson production I’d say it sounded like the worst thing ever (and Michael Bay did indeed want to make a gritty Hansel and Gretel movie at one point), but when it’s Will Ferrel and Adam McKay’s production company Gary Sanchez producing a film by Tommy Wirkola (of Død Snø fame), you hope that it’s well-directed satire. Of course, Hollywood has a way of turning a send-up into a straightforward movie about the thing you were trying to send up (The Change-Up, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter). You can decide whether that’s happened with Hansel after the jump. It looks slightly more tongue-in-cheek than Abe Lincoln Vamp Hunter, but not overtly comedic either, and the fact that it’s being dumped into theaters in January seems to indicate that the studio doesn’t think too highly of it. But Karl Hungus gets head butted in it, so there’s that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner in Entertainment Weekly‘s first look at Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (whose trailer is set to hit this Thursday). Now, if you take this as a serious movie, say, in the vein of Snow White and the Huntsman, a wholly unsatirical film in which Chris Hemsworth plays an axe-wielding medieval swordsman who teaches Snow White (played by Kristen Stewart) “the art of war” so that she might do battle (complete with swords and armor and sh*t) with her enemy the evil queen, it sounds like the stupidest thing ever (and yet telling that it’s still totally believable). However, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters comes from Tommy Wirkola (the guy who directed Død Snø, that movie about the blood-puking Nazi zombies) and Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company (Gary Sanchez productions); so I’m going to assume that it’s at least a semi-parody. In which case it’s a brilliant idea. Isn’t it amazing how just making something a satire can turn things around like that? Someone should try it with Billy Bush.

Here’s what Gemma Arterton told EW:

Folktales like this have been told over and over again, changing every time. What’s the constant that your movie picks up?
They resonate with your fears, that’s how these fairy tales worked. They scared you into behaving. This one in particular is about abandonment and being lost and parents leaving you. The heart of it is that these kids grow up to be bloodthirsty witch hunters. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, really. What would Hansel and Gretel be in 15 years time?

Though it’s comedic, deep down it’s about abused kids becoming kind of hyper-responsible?
But it’s also very, very dark, and bloodthirsty and there’s a lot of cursing. It’s kind of got a [Quentin] Tarantino feel, really.

I hope it’s more than a “little” tongue in cheek, but it’s probably good to have the actors taking it seriously anyway. Once those spazzes start hamming it up, it’s just a short, slippery slope to Kenan Thompson-land. I also enjoy that their costumes look like they could’ve just as easily come from Paul WS Anderson’s 3D, steampunk Three Musketeers movie. Is Jeremy Renner wearing… a sundial wrist watch with a big brass cover over it?? Amazing.

“What time is it?”

“DAMN! I don’t know! I can hardly get service with all these trees!”

Yo, son, these classic fairy tales are like hella boring!   HOLLYWOOD, DROP SOME PHAT BEATS ON THIS BITCH!

The studio is on the cusp of triggering production on the Gary Sanchez project Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a dark action movie that picks up with the fairy tale siblings years after the traumatic childhood incident has turned them into bounty hunters. Jeremy Renner, who has been attached for some time, finally has his sister in James Bond babe Gemma Arterton.

Director Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) is hoping to begin shooting the project in Berlin March 7. [THR]

They say “dark action movie”, but Gary Sanchez is Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company, and Tommy Wirkola made a movie about nazi zombies that puke blood, so I’m hoping the secret is that this is tongue in cheek or overtly comedic.  Otherwise, look for this tale to LOSE THE FAIRIES AND ADD RAP ROCK!  Yo, Gretel, drop some Red Bulls on the ground so we can find our way back from BASE jumping, TICK TICK TICK… SLUTS!

Play us out, parkour dog.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll take pretty much any excuse I can to post this video, but today I have a good one: the writer/director behind Død Snø (the movie this clip comes from, which opens in

Tommy Wirkola has an idea: “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.” Wirkola pitched Will Ferrell’s production company on the idea of exploring how things played out for the poor siblings 15 years after that whole gingerbread house incident. Simply put, they’re now specialized bounty hunters looking to put down the cackling black-hat set.

“The idea is, they’ve grown up and they hunt witches,” Adam McKay said. “It’s a hybrid sort of old-timey feeling, yet there’s pump-action shotguns. Modern technology but in an old style.  We heard it and we were just like, ‘That’s a freakin’ franchise! You could make three of those!’” [Yahoo]

Okay, settle down, spaz.  In the original, Hansel and Gretel burned the witch alive in an oven.  But if I know anything about bounty hunters, it’s that the worst thing they do to anyone is shoot them with mace or paintball guns.  Oh, and they hate black people. So basically, this is a modernized version of a germanic fairy tale in which the protagonists burn people in ovens and hate black people.  Talk about The Reader all over again.