Anne Hathaway’s Witches Remake Removed from WB’s Release Calendar

The movie calendar has received a substantial amount of changes over the past few days, and the summer season is looking pretty bare as a result. That said, it’s not just the summer season looking sparse, as films have also been shifted later in the year, and that includes the Robert Zemeckis remake of The Witches, which stars Anne Hathaway. Warner Bros. made several changes to their schedule, pushing the Matrix sequel and Wonder Woman 1984, and as for The Witches, the film has been removed from their release schedule, which is surprising since it was slated to hit theaters this October (via The Wrap). We’ll have to wait and see where the film lands, as this is probably not the last massive film shift we’ll see before all is said and done.

The Witches is a remake of the 1990 film that starred Anjelica Huston, and that original film was the last film that Jim Henson worked on personally for The Jim Henson Company before his death. Zemeckis has said it will stay close to the original vision, though it will feature a few tweaks and changes. “We’re going to set it in the Gothic South in the 1960s,” Zemeckis told Allocine. “It’s an exciting way to put a sociological spin on this kind of witch story.”

For those unfamiliar, The Witches is based on the 1983 children’s novel by writer Roald Dahl and revolves around a young boy who discovers a coven of witches that hate children and have disguised themselves as normal people, blending in so they can kidnap and kill children. The young boy who discovers them is turned into a mouse, but despite the transformation, it is up to him and his retired witch hunter grandmother to take out the coven.

You can find the official synopsis for The Witches below.

“Zemeckis’s “visually innovative” The Witches tells the darkly humorous and heartwarming tale of a young orphaned boy (Jahzir Kadeem Bruno) who, in late 1967, goes to live with his loving Grandma (Octavia Spencer) in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis. The boy and his grandmother come across some deceptively glamorous but thoroughly diabolical witches, so Grandma wisely whisks our young hero away to an opulent seaside resort. Regrettably, they arrive at precisely the same time that the world’s Grand High Witch (Hathaway) has gathered her fellow cronies from around the globe—undercover—to carry out her nefarious plans.”