Cast Highlights: Jeremy Renner Famke Janssen Peter Stormare Ingrid Bolsø Berdal Monique Ganderton

Character: Gretel
Production Status: On DVD & Blu-ray
Release Date: January 11, 2013 (USA)
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Writers: D.W. Harper (screenplay), Tommy Wirkola (screenplay)
Genre: Action | Comedy | Horror
MPAA Rating: n/a

Plot Outline:
In the children’s book Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic witch living deep in the forest in a house made of gingerbread and she tries to kill them and cook them. However, they manage to save their lives by outwitting her.

The film is set 15 years after the siblings killed the witch who kidnapped them. Hansel and Gretel have now evolved into bounty hunters who pursue witches.

Gemma’s Role:
Gemma Arterton plays Gretel.

“It’s when they’re 15 years older,” she commented. “I’m really excited about it because it’s quite a big role for me and quite a departure from anything I’ve done before, so watch this space!”

Speaking to the Daily Mail Arterton said: “It’s about these damaged kids really, and now we’re all grown up.

“You see a series of flashbacks with their experience of killing that first witch, which is brilliant. I remember being on set for the final few days of that. The candy house, and the witches are really repulsive and quite frightening. The makeup is out of this world. It’s this bone-chilling scene. Very dark. The girl who plays my character is brilliant, with the horrified expression she has.” (Entertainment Weekly)

“Jeremy and I spent a lot of time thinking about being siblings who feel they need to protect each other and behaving like brother and sister, making it detailed so it wasn’t just two actors kicking butt, really. That would get boring. In our minds, these are two people who grew up with no parents and they only have each other and the bond they have, and with the complexities of that, some resentment. They had to murder somebody when they are kids! So it’s all about being tough. Jeremy and I found within the script moments where we showed the vulnerable side of them. Often in action movies, people are scared to put that in. I think it was important. Just a couple moments, tender moments, when the guard drops, then you understand.”

Arterton said: “I can’t say too much about it but it’s an action movie. It’s kind of like Tarantino-style Hansel and Gretel. And it’s very violent. I’m playing the heroine for once – not the sidekick!”

So she’ll be a gun-toting Gretel? “I won’t have a gun. But I might have a crossbow.”

“Gretel’s quite wild. She’s super cool, and violent.

“She has a crossbow, she headbutts people, folk get decapitated, noses get bitten off. It’s so ridiculous that it’s funny, but I wouldn’t mess with her.”

“For the role as Gretel (grown-up), I wore the coolest costume yet, I got to wear skin-tight brown leather trousers and a forest-green corset, which is pretty much my style, very Rick Owens.”

“Gretel is much more in tune with her spiritual side. Hansel is a typical action hero, cheeky, funny, a womanizer. She’s much more of a thinker, intense, internal and bit more open-minded than he is. Even though Gretel is very tough and can handle herself, she’s still a girl. [Laughs.] She’s got feminine ways.”

Trivia: Diane Kruger, Eva Green and Noomi Rapace were considered to play Gretel, but Gemma Arterton eventually got cast.