This Thursday, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her and “Tales From the Crypt” director Robert Zemeckis once again aims to bring the fun with his fresh retelling of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, which will skip theaters and cackle its way directly into your home exclusively on HBO Max October 22.
Produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, the new take infuses modern CGI with the familiar story of a boy who is turned into a mouse.
Bloody Disgusting has an exclusive pair of TV spots that offer up new footage from inside the hotel where a coven of witches and their Grand High Witch, played this time by Anne Hathaway, gather for an annual meetup. One of the spots really plays up Hathaway’s crazed performance as the Grand High Witch, while the other delivers a jolt of crazed mayhem. All around, this looks like an absolute blast!
Described as being “visually innovative,” Zemeckis’s movie “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 (Anne Hathaway) has gathered her fellow cronies from around the globe—undercover—to carry out her nefarious plans.”
Based on the 1973 novel, Zemeckis’ version will be more rooted in the original source material, which had a much darker, franchise-beginning finale (the young boy remains a mouse and must spend his short life hunting and killing all of those registered in the Grand High Witch’s address book).
READ ALSO: Why 1990’s The Witches is the Scariest Children’s Horror Film Ever Made
