Movies
New Scribe to Sweeten ‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’
Writer Dante Harper has been hired to sprinkle a few more bread crumbs on the script for Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. Dead Snow co-writer/director Tommy Wirkola is helming the project for Gary Sanchez Prods. and Paramount. The Norwegian pitched and plotted out the story line, which picks up the fairy-tale siblings 15 years after their traumatic gingerbread house incident, which provoked them to become witch bounty hunters. But here’s the cool news, Sanchez execs Kevin Messick, Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and Chris Henchy are producing the horror-action comedy, which is pitched as having a gory-but-funny Shaun of the Dead vibe. Harper also worked on the Cronenberg-esque screenplay for Black Hole, which director David Fincher has been developing at Paramount.
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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