Jeremy Renner And Noomi Rapace To Star In ‘Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters’?
In April of last year,Dead SnowdirectorTommy Wirkoladropped a weird bomb:his follow-up filmwould beHansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, which catches up with Hansel and Gretel fifteen years after a witch tried to turn them into dinner.
We haven’t heard much about the film since screenwriterDante Harperwashired to write. (He wrote David Fincher’s unproducedBlack Holecomic adaptation, andAll You Need is Kill.) There was recent indication that casting wasabout to beginfor a shoot taking place later this year. Now we’ve got two names to lead the cast:Jeremy Renner(The Hurt Locker,The Avengers, the newMission: Impossible) andNooomi Rapace, famous fromThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
That’s quite a duo. And it’s an interesting project for Rapace to get locked into, given that there has been a lot of interest in her move to Hollywood, in the wake of great admiration for her work in the originalDragon Tattoo. (Yep, that’s her above. What, never seen her out of Salander’s character?) Jeremy Renner dropped the info himself during an interview at the Venice Film Festival. (AtDagsavisen, viaTwitch.)
A loose translation of Renner’s comments, which went from English to Norwegian and back again (yike) is “I likedDead Snow, and I like seeing that Scandinavian directors have a combination of horror and humor. I thinkHansel and Gretelwill be awesome. I play him and Noomi Rapace plays Gretel. They have become adults, are damned and going on witch hunting.”
The caveat is that the deals aren’t signed yet, but that Renner is talking about it suggests forward momentum, at least.
Adam McKayand his Gary Sanchez Productions got the film going at Paramount. McKay said early on,
Early word on the film, which was based only on Wirkola’s pitch, is that Hansel and Gretel are essentially witch bounty hunters, and that the vibe is somewhere betweenShaun of the DeadandEvil Dead 2. That was before Harper came on to write, so I’m not sure how things have worked out. Attracting Renner and Rapace says a lot, though — they’ve both got careers on the upswing, and if they’re going to agree to do a smaller studio project, I expect they wouldn’t jump into a dunking barrel of crap. (Hopefully Renner is on this because he wants to be, and not through some package deal that also landed him Paramount’s newMission: Impossiblepicture.)
