Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters was supposed to open earlier this year, but Paramount pushed it to January 25th of next year so it would release after people had already seen Jeremy Renner (Hansel) in The Avengers and The Bourne Legacy. Usually that’s a bad sign, and the green band trailer didn’t help. For a movie from Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company that’s directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow), we were expecting something far more funny. Thankfully, the red band trailer (below) doesn’t seem to be taking itself quite as seriously. It still looks like a bomb, but it least in might be a fun movie to heckle with friends.
The red band is filled with witch killscenes and a little more humor than the previous trailer, so that’s something. Here’s the official synopsis to help make a little more sense of things:
Catching up with Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) 15 years after the traumatic incident involving a gingerbread house, the siblings have evolved into vengeful bounty hunters dedicated to exterminating witches. Over the years, the siblings became expert hunters, famous for their proficiency at tracking and taking down their prey. Although still recovering from their ordeal, their work is relatively easy as for an unknown reason harmful spells and curses do not work well against them.
The Mayor of Augsburg recruits them to rid the town and nearby forests of an evil sorceress (Famke Janssen) who is planning to sacrifice many local children at the witches’ gathering during the upcoming ‘Blood Moon’ night in two days time. To make things worse, the duo also has to deal with the brutal Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare) who has taken power in Augsburg and conducts a very indiscriminate witch-hunt of his own.
The gingerbread house incident was 15 years ago? You mean when Gemma Arteron would have been around 11 years old, and Jeremy Renner would have been 26? I don’t remember Hansel being a grown-ass man in the fairy tale. Hollywood, I’m going to tell you something you don’t seem to understand: people can tell when a woman is way, way too young compared to the male you cast as her brother, son, boyfriend, etc. You’re creeping us out, ya bunch of Woodersons.
[Sources: Bleeding Cool, /film, Blastr]