Now before you get all up in arms about the absence of a certain big red bow, this is a production that’s unaffiliated with Studio Ghibli. Instead, they’re going back to the source material, Eiko Kadono‘s novel Majo no Takkyūbin.

Think the Beast will actually be a Beast or will they pull a CW and scar a male model? 

Contention roils within the Mary Sue offices on whether Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters looks like yet another ill advised attempt to blockbuster up a Grimm’s fairy tale that’s taking itself way too seriously; or a spiritual sucessor to films like Van Helsing or Sleepy Hollow that took themselves just seriously enough to go right around the bend to being dark comedy action movies. Either way, it’s the rare action film with a male and female lead who are not in a romantic relationship, so we’re keeping an eye on it.

There isn’t really much more gore or violence in this trailer than those that have come before. There is, however a bit of NSFW language, so be warned.

(via MTV Movies.)

A normal person might ask: Jeremy Renner. You are an Academy Award nominated actor, and fresh off the third highest grossing movie in history. What are you doing in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters? We know: Jeremy Renner just wants us to be happy.

(via IGN.)

We’re holding out hope that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, featuring a kickass sibling team up, will be something of a buddy cop movie… if cops were witch killers… in an over the top period fantasy piece. The characters have double billing, and after all, it’s not like they’re going to have a romantic subplot. This trailer doesn’t exactly confirm that hope, though we still hold it. Rest assured, however, that we’ll have a review up on it as close to its release date as possible.

Come little children, the times come for a Hocus Pocus sequel! I love the 1993 Disney film starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy so much I don’t even care that this is quite assuredly a terrible idea. Read on for details! 

Did you happen to see this amazingly cool armor-inspired hoodie floating around the internet yesterday? A lot of people did, and now its creator — Chadwick Dillon of SOF Works — has been bombarded with so many requests that he has evacuated the internet. Well, he’s gone on vacation until all the requests can be sorted out. But you should really take a look at this thing, and then imagine yourself cosplaying a better version of Snow White and the Huntsman.

One of Germany’s most notorious witch trials will be re-examined with the goal of clearing the name of a woman many believe was wrongly accused and executed for being a witch. Katharina Henot ran the post office for the city of Cologne with her brother, and apparently, the Imperial Court wanted in on some of their profits and started planning a central post office. So, when a local nun started pointing paranoid fingers at Henoit and her case went to the Imperial court, she didn’t exactly have many allies. While thousands were subject to the witch trials, the results of Henot’s was considered especially egregious, so much so that Henot was immortalized as a statue on the Cologne Town Hall building after her execution. Now, the city council that convicted her is taking another look at the case and trying to clear her name.

An archaeological dig in Tuscany uncovered what appears to be a “witches’ graveyard.” One of the dearly departed? A set of 800-year old remains belonging to a woman who had seven nails lodged in her jawbone. This discovery, as well as a set of more nails that surrounded her skeleton (to pin her clothing down so she wouldn’t rise from the dead), are what led the archaeologists to believe she was a witch. There was no indication of a false nose, but they did find other items that helped them make their conclusion.

Real wiccans, upon viewing a fictional character on the fictional supernatural show True Blood, are upset about the wiccan character currently featured in the show’s fourth season, Marnie Stonebrook (Fiona Shaw). They think she’s doing things that are unbecoming of a witch, like giving up her vow to do no harm with her magic so she can allow herself to be possessed by another dead witch and forego all her own control. This would matter, if True Blood was a documentary. And it’s not.