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News The Witches - Starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Directed by Robert Zemekis

JD

JD

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The Witches is a new movie adaptation of the Road Dahl novel of the same name, fearturing Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Jahzir Bruno and the voice of Chris Rock.
The movie follows a boy (Bruno) who is staying with his grandmother (Spencer), when he stumbles across a conference of witches lead by The Grand High Witch (Hathaway), who are turning children into mice.
The book was previously adapted into a 1991 movie produced by Jim Henson, starring Anjelica Huston and Rowan Atkinson, and directed by Nicholas Roeg .

HBO Max Trailer:
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WB UK Trailer:
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Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Produced by Robert Zemeckis, Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron
Written by Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro
Cast:
Anne Hathaway as The Grand High Witch
Octavia Spencer as The Grandmother
Jahzir Kadeem Bruno as The Boy
Chris Rock as The Narrator, the Boy as an adult
Stanley Tucci as Mr. Stringer
Kristin Chenoweth as a mouse
Codi-Lei Eastwick as Bruno Jenkins
Charles Edwards as Mr. Jenkins
Morgana Robinson as Mrs. Jenkins
Eugenia Caruso as Consuela
Simon Mayond as Sous-Chef
Amber Flangan as Esmeralda
This looks like a lot of fun, and it's got one hell of a team behind the camera, and some great actors in the cast. I'm definitely going to be watching this first day it drops on HBO Max.
 
The original movie worked because it was scary. Turning the story into a comedy makes it lose some of its appeal, IMO.
 
Great casting but it seems, based on the voice over, like they've changed the ending again.
 
The book ends with...
the witch population of England being obliterated, but the boy unable to resume his normal form. Because he is physically a mouse, his lifespan is drastically reduced, so he and his grandmother vow to use their remaining time to go over to America and exterminate more witches.

The 1990 movie ends with...
One witch surviving and changing her ways. She uses her magical powers to restore the boy to human form.
 
Yup, all of that but plus this one bit from the book:

The boy also says that he's happy to have this reduced lifespan because he didn't want to outlive his grandmother.
 
And that ending works for kids. The makers of the film might have been worried about alienating adult filmgoers, who feel very different about
the notion of outliving their children.

Remember, though, we don't absolutely know that the ending is different. We won't know that until we read the book.
 
Yeah, that does make it seem very unlikely they're using the book ending.
 
But surprises do happen. And given that Roald Dahl practically went to war over the original ending change, it seems unlikely that his heirs would support the project if they didn't stick to the original version.
 
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