A while back we learned that the man himself, Guillermo del Toro, would be producing an Alfonso Cuaron-directed version of Roald Dahl‘s The Witches. Now it seems that instead, del Toro will be the one directing (though he’s the busiest director on the planet already) and Cuaron will produce.
As many of you know via many nightmare-filled nights after watching it — the story was made into a film in 1990 also called The Witches and it starred Angelica Huston as the head witch. I don’t know about you, but that movie used to absolutely terrify me (the story with the little girl in the painting!), yet at the same time, I couldn’t look away or hide my eyes… I always had to be watching. In regards to that version and this new one, Cuaron shared the big news that differentiates the two.
It won’t be like the original Nicolas Roeg version, which was a beautiful film [because Guillermo is going to] do it completely in stop-motion animation.
This now makes stop-motion del Toro’s new passion, as it was recently reported that he also was doing a new version of Pinocchio that would be entirely stop-motion as well (see Guillermo del Toro To Bring Pinocchio To Life).
I’m not sure a stop-motion version of The Witches could surpass the original as I assumed a live-action version would, but it’s still really damn exciting to think about. And with Alfonso Cuaron assuring us that “Guillermo wrote this amazing screenplay really quickly.” Who isn’t excited?
[Source: Empire]
