Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters has never looked terribly appealing. It mostly looks like an even lower-rent version of The Brothers Grimm, a movie that broke something in my brain to the point where I couldn’t stop laughing for the last twenty minutes of the movie. Seriously. Anyway, the Jeremy Renner/Gemma Arterton action-fantasy joint has been delayed from this March to January 2013. Paramount claims that the film is being delayed as a response to The Devil Inside, which had the third-biggest box office opening in January of all time, the logic being that if that movie makes it, January is less of the usual dumping grounds for crap movies that it’s historically been. The other reason is to give audiences a better chance to get to know Jeremy Renner before the film releases, as most audiences will be seeing him in The Avengers and The Bourne Legacy this year, on top of his great showing in last month’s Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
To me, this sounds more like they know they’ve got a stinker, so they’re hoping that Renner’s extra Q score next year will make up for the fact that the movie’s near DOA. Just a hypothesis, but let’s face it. Devil Inside was a fluke. Forget it, Jake, it’s January.
[Via /Film]
