Pictured here: Jeremy Renner trying to figure out whether he has to be in this or if he can go back to making movies that the producing studio doesn’t hate.

Look, I’m well aware that there are fans of Hansel and Gretel out there, and I would never denigrate anybody who loves an mostly inoffensive flop. In fact, I was actively hoping that H&G would wind up being the same kind of lovable camp as Van Helsing. According to my usual sources, however, it wasn’t. Additionally, it made a very paltry American box office. So why has Paramount put a sequel into development?

Editor’s Note: We ask contributing writer Amanda LaPergola to report on the world of pop culture with her unique style and insights.  Sometimes she does something like that.

“You cannot force this kind of creative process,” she told us once.  “It needs to evolve on its own.  It’s like Pokémon.  You just can’t say to a Pokémon ‘Hey, Pokémon!  Be a different Pokémon!’ and expect it to evolve.  That is not how it works.  First, it needs to spend time jammed up in a constrictive red and white ball.  Then, you let it out occasionally to fight other Pokémon to near-death.  With time and encouragement, your Pokémon will grow and change from a weird little hamster-thing to a weird little hamster-thing with antlers.  And then you get to eat it.  I think.  I’ve never played Pokémon.  Anyway, what was saying?  Oh yeah, can you pay for this coffee?”

That was four months ago.  We had not heard from Amanda since.

However, just yesterday, a package arrived at Mary Sue headquarters containing what appeared to be a note from Amanda’s mom (“Dear Miss Sue:  Please excuse my daughter’s absence over the past few months.  She wants me to tell you she had mono, but really she has been searching the internet for the secret fourth season of Downton Abbey she believes Queen Elizabeth is keeping to herself”) and the following pages…

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, dear God, why.” That is an excellent place to start from. Unfortunately, that’s just the start. H&G is, quite obvious to anyone who has so much as seen a billboard for it, DOA. This is not the part that is interesting; plenty of dead cinematic bodies show up in theaters every year, increasingly so in the empty, hollow months just following award-season cutoff. What is interesting is why such an obviously cold cadaver is showing up at all, even metaphorically. Such a crime of film is as apparent as any corporeal evidence; we cluster around the edges of the taped-off scene muttering amongst ourselves, ‘why, why did this happen?’

So, in the spirit of continued analogy, I am here to perform an autopsy on the long-dead corpse of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. This procedure is not due to a genetic lack of the “fun” gland in this anatomist’s body. On the contrary, “fun” is what Hansel & Gretel could have used a good deal more of, and what it so agonizingly lacks.

(Contained therein are a few spoilers. How much one might care about them we leave entirely to the reader’s discretion.)

I’m going to be honest here: I’m not tremendously excited about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. It just doesn’t look good to me. But some comments made by co-star Gemma Arterton about her character in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex blog has left me with good feelings towards the actress, if not the movie.

Because, look. Even if Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters looks like a stinker, I can always appreciate some kick-butt ladies, whether fictional (Gretel) and/or real-life (Arterton).

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.