After a recent live-action reworking back in 2020 following countless previous renditions, Chile’s Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña (The Wolf House) are now set to tackle the classic Grimm fairy story Hansel & Gretel via stop-motion with a new film.
Variety also reports that Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg have boarded the project as executive producers. León and Cociña previously worked with Aster on Beau is Afraid. Per the outlet, the story is expected to “twist the fairy tale into inimitable shapes.”
“It’s our very personal adaptation of the classic fairy tale, with the main difference that Hansel and Gretel are both boys in this version, at least at the beginning of the story,” Cristóbal León told the website. In this telling, “the story itself gets lost,” León adds.
Aster tells Variety, “Cociña and León are among the true originals working in animation right now. You can trace their sensibility back to several artists of the uncanny, but there is no real analogue for the effect that their work produces in the viewer.”
You can also expect things to be unrestricted by what the studio system wants. “We try hard to keep it experimental and not to feel like bureaucrats of artwork, you know, because, in animation, it’s really easy to become a slave to the decisions that you took previously,” said León.
The project is now seeking co-production partners.
Originally published May 22, 2024. Updated May 21, 2024.
