The 2021 remake of The Witches will apparently get the same rating as the 1990 original. Not that surprising, all things considered, and it might not even mean much.

Anne Hathaway is clearly the star of "The Witches".
Clearly, the witches are the true stars of this movie. Also, whoever wrote this clearly wasn’t using spell check.

Remakes, Remakes Everywhere!

Yes, apparently the 1990 movie adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches is getting a remake. The original managed to secure a PG rating from the dreaded MPAA for “scary images/moments, language, and thematic elements”. Now it seems the 2021 remake managed to also secure a PG rating, presumably for similar reasons. I wouldn’t expect a remake to be substantially different from its original, but you never can tell. Looking at you, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).

The 2 Willy Wonkas for comparison.
Johnny Depp made a weird Willy Wonka.

Now, if you were to ask me before about movies that I thought would likely get a remake, The Witches would not have been one of them. And yet, here we are. Not only that, it’s being directed by Robert Zemeckis. Robert Zemeckis directed the Back to the Future trilogy, so we can expect some fun out of this movie. At the same time though, you can see that one of the producers is Guillermo del Toro. Yes, that del Toro. You know, the one responsible for giving us such delights as Pan’s Labyrinth. Remember the eye monster?

The eyes! THE EYES!
My, what big eyes you have! And in totally the wrong places too!

Yep, you can likely expect this remake of The Witches to have some genuinely creepy stuff in it. Likely not to the level of Pan’s Labyrinth though. The Witches got a PG rating after all, not the R rating the latter got. There’s a big difference there. Although, of course, the MPAA isn’t exactly known for their fairness or their consistency.

Why the rating of "The Witches" might not mean much.
Because swearing is clearly more offensive than blood and gore.

But that’s just me.

Conclusion

The Witches (1990) is getting a remake, and it’ll be rated PG. Of course, it may not mean much. It may end up being freakier than the original, which is saying a lot.

Clearly, there’s nothing more horrific than a bald witch.

The combination of Guillermo del Toro and the MPAA’s frankly ridiculous guidelines for rating movies will ensure that. Expect potentially disturbing things when it finally releases sometime in 2021.

Source: JoBlo.com