Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Gets Pushed All The Way To The 2013 Dumping Ground

[Brendon Connelly]

I've spoken to three people who've seen a trailer for Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, the English language debut of Dead Snow's Tommy Wirkola. One had a vested interest in it and said lightly positive things, one just shrugged it off and the third absolutely damned it. Still, it was only a trailer.

Only one indicator, and possibly a minor one, of a film's quality.

And here comes another.

Paramount have pushed the film out of its Autumn "to be determined" release slot and all the way back to 2013. A quick glance at Twitter shows me that many people, including some I thought would know better, are still assuming Hansel & Gretel was still slotted in for this March, but it lost that page on the diary at New Year.

The studio are now planning to release the film in the US next January, the month typically considered something of a dumping ground.

The film stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as the titular siblings, getting tooled up and going on a witch hunt. There's been one image officially released, via EW, and that's the one at the head of the post.

[Jimvanhise]

Interesting how Noomi Rapace disappeared from the cast as announced in 2010. Even if it's bad, Jeremy Renner was just in Ghost Protocol and will be in The Avengers this summer, so an August release might make more sense as that tends to be a dumping ground, too.

[kenny38606]

From what I understand, per a Paramount exec, they're doing what studios have sometimes done in the past.Because the two leads aren't as recognizable, they're holding the film until next January, because by then Renner will have appeared in Mission Impossible, The Avengers and The Borne Legacy within a year.

So, they're waiting to capitalize on his upcoming fame from appearing in 3 high profile films.By then he should be a bigger name.Also, Paramount currently has a January hit with The Devil Inside and they're hoping they might duplicate that success again.

I know The Weinstein Company is currently doing this with The Wettest County.It was originally schedule for an April release, but the studio decided to hold it until August in order to capitalize off of Tom Hardy's appeal following The Dark Knight's release this summer.