The way the movie business tends to work is that any feature transparently designed to be the first of many will be granted its wish should the profit margins deem it an opportunity too good to pass up, but nobody involved in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters seemed to get the memo.
Sure, the hybrid of high fantasy and blood-soaked horror was resoundingly trashed by critics and currently holds an unwanted Rotten Tomatoes score of only 16 percent, but it was a certifiable commercial phenomenon that nobody saw coming. On a production budget of $50 million, the gonzo slasher-cum-fairytale hauled in a mind-boggling $226 million from theaters.
As you’d expect, a sequel was announced shortly after, but it never ended up happening. When the big screen route drew a blank, it was instead revealed that a TV series was on the way, but lightning struck twice in the wrong way and that didn’t happen, either. There was probably money to be made, but Witch Hunters‘ concept and failure to launch an ongoing saga has found Redditors comparing it to Stephen Sommers’ campy cult favorite Van Helsing, and it’s easy to see why.
Both feature recognizable stars throwing on their period best to battle creatures of myth and legend while wielding anachronistic weaponry and a pithy put-down or three, but the differences are also pretty stark. Hugh Jackman’s monster-slayer didn’t even have the chance to fight for a second installment after the extravagant blockbuster disappointed at the box office, while Witch Hunters gets to lean into its excessive nature a lot harder thanks to an R-rating.
They may both exist as one-and-done B-tier favorites in A-list clothing, but they’d still make for a hell of a double bill.
