Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 28, 2013. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
"Don’t eat the F*&@ing Candy", as the film poster so beautifully and truthfully puts it. The film opens in cinemas today and finally finishes the story that began so many years ago. Hansel is played by "Avengers" archer Jeremy Renner, while Gretel is portrayed by "Prince of Persia" beauty Gemma Arterton. Incidentally, it was directed by Norwegian genre specialist Tommy Wirkola, who most recently caused a stir with the wicked zombie comedy "Dead Snow".
Filming took place entirely in Germany. The crew found fairytale forests in Saxon Switzerland and Brandenburg, but most of the film was made at Filmpark Babelsberg. A forest with real trees was recreated in the Marlene Dietrich Hall, as was a rocky landscape for which more than 1,000 cubic metres of polystyrene were used.
The crew numbered 600 people; in total, filming took place on 20 sets in nine studios at Babelsberg, and an outdoor set with a marketplace intended to represent Augsburg was built on the site’s backlot. Numerous scenes were ultimately filmed in Braunschweig – and also in 3D. The original plan was to shoot the film in 2D and then convert it. However, this approach was changed somewhat, initially only for the final action sequence, which would have been too difficult to convert, but then also for other parts of the film. The stereo recordings were handled by the Bavarian company Stereotec (http://stereotec.com).
Here is another making-of video from the shoot:
Images and B-roll: Paramount Pictures Germany
