Hansel & Gre­tel: Witch Hunters

[Eng­lish trans­la­tion of a news­pa­per clip­ping from Dag­bladet, Norway’s third most pop­u­lar tabloid newspaper]

Date: 3 June, 2009

Head­line: School­boy Lives Hol­ly­wood Dream

Body: Tom­my Wirko­la, a third year stu­dent at north­ern Oslo’s Pinecone Acad­e­my Mid­dle School, has been offered a once-in-a-life­time chance to make a film with the full finan­cial back­ing of a top Hol­ly­wood stu­dio. The People’s Film com­pe­ti­tion was launched back in April of 2011 with the aim of offer­ing a chance for a nor­mal per­son to make a nor­mal film for nor­mal peo­ple. It sought to democ­ra­tise the medi­um of cin­e­ma in new and excit­ing ways, putting the cam­era into the hands a new audi­ence arche­type they’re call­ing, ​“Jonas Plebtard”.

Wirkola’s idea beat lit­er­al­ly bil­lions of entries from all over Europe, exam­ples of which include every­thing from an action-hor­ror film about The Great New York Pen­guin Infes­ta­tion of 1993, to an exact­ing his­to­r­i­al re-enact­ment of the bat­tle of Rourke’s Drift set to the music of Hot Chip.

Wirkola’s par­ents, Ron­nie and Susie-Sue-Sue, were shocked and bemused when they orig­i­nal­ly heard the news, but they have since claimed to be ​“extreme­ly proud” of their only son: ​“When he got the telegram to say that he had won, we were so per­plexed. For a 12-year-old to beat so many clever peo­ple is kind of incred­i­ble real­ly. We’re still shocked. I cried for three hours.”

And what was this idea that some­how rose to the top of this mass del­uge of cre­ative think­ing? It was a vio­lent steam­punk re-imag­in­ing of beloved Ger­man­ic fairy tale, ​‘Hansel And Gre­tel’, which pos­es the ques­tion we’ve all asked at one point in our lives: what did the can­dy-gourg­ing kids do next? Like most young peo­ple who suf­fered extreme abuse in their for­ma­tive years, the pair tooled-up with pump-action shot guns and mul­ti-direc­tion­al cross­bows and ded­i­cat­ed their lives to rid­ding the world of their hag­gard tormentors.

Accord­ing to Wirko­la, who counts play­ing com­put­er games, watch­ing films based on com­put­er games, eat­ing crisps and re-watch­ing Buffy among his hob­bies, he saw this as the nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion for these two dam­aged souls: ​“I just thought that if you go through that kind of hor­ror when you’re young, it’s only nat­ur­al that you’re going to want to take revenge on the world. With lots of head-butting.”

It’s also been moot­ed that this new ver­sion will be a lit­tle more adult-ori­ent­ed than we might have expect­ed, with promis­es of much limb lop­ping among the pair’s adven­tures. ​“Hmm… Yes, let’s clear this up now. If I’m watch­ing a film and I can see after five min­utes that there’s not going to be any explod­ing heads, I’ll just turn off,” says Wirko­la. ​“For me, it’s just not worth it.”

When asked who he intends to cast in the film, Wirko­la already has some very strong ideas: ​“I def­i­nite­ly want Jere­my Ren­ner because he was so awe­some in The Hurt Lock­er. I liked the fact that he was quite angry, but still man­aged to be quite cool. I also want Gem­ma Arter­ton to play Gre­tel, but that’s for more per­son­al rea­sons which I don’t wish to get into here.”

Young Tommy’s lack of expe­ri­ence as a film­mak­er might be seen by some as a very big cre­ative and finan­cial risk, but stu­dio head Rick Span­gle has assured us that there’s real­ly no cause for con­cern: ​“If any­thing,” Rick told us via Skype from an eco-tent in Carmel, ​“Tom­my is over-qual­i­fied for this gig. We’ve cur­rent­ly got two Flem­ish Eras­mus stu­dents mas­ter­mind­ing the new M Night Shya­malan project. Trust me, it’s just bet­ter this way.”

Pro­duc­tion on this new Hansel And Gre­tel film is set to get under­way imme­di­ate­ly, with Tom­my being snatched from his fam­i­ly and giv­en just ten days to make the film which will take place almost entire­ly in a desert­ed pine for­est. ​“If you love see­ing peo­ple run­ning through pine forests, you’re real­ly not going to want to miss this!” What could pos­si­bly go wrong?