As signalled by the moment she became the hilariously self-aware best part of Ocean’s 8, Anne Hathaway is entering the diva era of her career. She’s done playing ditzy romcom heroines and vulnerable urchins; she’s no longer a princess, but a queen.
And what better way to mark that than by taking on a role that is both regal and absolutely terrifying?
Back To The Future director Robert Zemeckis is remaking The Witches, the Roald Dahl movie previously adapted in 1990 with Anjelica Huston as the glamorous/terrifying Grand High Witch.
Quick hands up if you were scarred for life by the prospect of being turned into a mouse, the child trapped in the haunted painting, and/or this terrifying special effects makeup courtesy of Jim Henson himself?
This is the role Anne Hathaway will be taking on: the extremely evil, but somehow still undeniably fabulous, Grand High Witch.
According to a magazine interview quoted on Wikipedia, the original movie saw the late director Nicholas Roeg – who also directed David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth – tell Huston that the Grand High Witch should have “sex appeal at all times” even when she was wearing her bald prosthetics and mechanised claws.
Zemeckis, who also brought you funny-disturbing classics like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Death Becomes Her, will be writing the script, but also teaming up with Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaròn as producers.
With those kinds of professional weirdos on board, Hathaway in full-on evil mode will be enormously fun to watch.
Also, calling it now: the witches’ SFX makeup will be less orc-hag, and more Bird Box creatures.
