'Gretel and Hansel' Movie Gets 2020 Release Date

Gretel and Hansel, Orion Pictures's dark reimagining of the classic Grimm Brothers fairy tale starring IT breakout Sophia Lillis, will be in theaters on January 31, 2020. According to THR, The story is described as being set a long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside and focuses on a young girl who leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil. The film, which will take a horror approach to the fairy tale, is to be directed by horror director Osgood Perkins, from a screenplay he wrote with Rob Hayes.

While The Brothers Grimm -- and public domain properties as a whole -- have been a difficult sell at the domestic box office in recent years (check out the numbers on Robin Hood), Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters earned over $250 million worldwide against its $50 million budget back in 2013. The film was meant to get a sequel, but one never materialized. Eventually it seemed like the movie had been cancelled in favor of a TV series follow-up but that, too, failed to surface. This film is not connected to the Witch Hunters franchise, but given that movie's success and the lack of a sequel, launching a more "adult" and horror-tinged version of the story is arguably not a surprising move. In 2014, just a year after Witch Hunters was released, a Hansel and Gretel film was reportedly in development based on Neil Gaiman's interpretation of the characters, so it is not even a new idea. Attaching that franchise to Lillis, who won over a lot of critics and moviegoers in IT, is equally unsurprising.

Per the THR story, the film will also include performances by Sammy Leakey, Star Trek: First Contact's Alice Krige, Arrow's Jessica De Gouw and Black Mirror's Charles Babalola. Sinister's Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and La La Land's Fred Berger will produce the film with executive producer Sandra Yee Ling on board.

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