Sophia Lillis is Gretel in the first look image from Gretel & Hansel. The story of a brother and sister who encounter a child-eating witch (and her house made of candy) in the woods was made famous by the Brothers Grimm in the early 1800s, and has been re-imagined many times over since then. In recent years, Neil Gaiman put his own spin on the tale with a book retelling featuring black and white illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti. Around the same time, Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton played a grown-up Hansel and Gretel in a decidedly tongue in cheek spin on the story, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.
Gretel & Hansel, as its title implies, retells the fairy tale more from Gretel's perspective, with IT and Sharp Objects' Lillis playing a slightly older than usual Gretel opposite Sammy Leakey (MotherFatherSon) as her younger brother. Filming got underway in November 2018, with Lillis and Leakey joined by Alice Krige (The OA), Charles Babalola (Black Mirror) and Jessica De Gouw (Arrow) in the cast. Now, Orion Pictures has started pulling the curtain back on the movie.
The studio released the first image from Gretel & Hansel today, confirming the film for a January 31, 2020 release date in the process. You can check out the photo in the space below.
As the creepy lighting of this image suggests, Gretel & Hansel is a full-blown horror movie re-imagining of the fairy tale. This version of the story was written by Rob Hayes (Chewing Gum) and follows Gretel and Hansel as they venture "into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil". The film was directed by Oz Perkins, who previously made his debut on the well-received 2015 supernatural thriller The Blackcoat's Daughter and followed that a year later with another horror movie in the form of Netflix's I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Perkins' second film earned a cooler reception than his first, but both were praised for their gothic atmosphere and creepy, slow-burn storytelling - something that bodes well for his efforts on Gretel & Hansel.
Given its lack of big name actors and/or a popular brand, it makes sense for Gretel & Hansel to open at a less competitive time like late January. The film will open directly against Blake Lively's assassin thriller The Rhythm Section (which was only recently delayed from its November 2019 date), but will have face some competition for the horror crowd from Floria Sigismondi's The Turn of the Screw retelling, The Turning (which arrives a week earlier). Still, if word of mouth is good, Gretel & Hansel should be able to attract a decent-sized audience that's in the mood for a scarier spin on the all too familiar cautionary tale about not trusting strangers with candy (houses).
Source: Orion Pictures