It looked like a little person and that’s what I imagined as I was doing the scene. When I was having breakfast in my room, I would do the lines opposite the cute little cup they brought the boiled eggs in. “As I was learning the scenes I would do them out loud and do the lines opposite a doorknob or the salt shaker. “One of the things Bob impressed upon me was that he really wanted those moments to feel real,” Spencer explains. It was a challenge for the filmmakers, as well as for Spencer, who had to learn to act opposite nothing when filming the scenes with the mice. The scene pairs live-action moments with Grandma and the Grand High Witch, and animated moments with the mice. “Grandma knew how to combat witches and wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself and her grandson. “I thought it was amazing,” Spencer adds of the scene. It was important to see her character do what she needed to do.” She’s a strong, opinionated Southern American woman who isn’t going be run over by a witch. The young boy describes her in the beginning of the movie that she’ll give you a big, old hug or a spanking if you needed one.

“It was a beat that a movie needs so that both the grandma and our hero mice have their big showdown with the Grand High Witch. “That came from my moviemaking story sense,” Zemeckis says. Here it adds a big heroic moment for the kids and Grandma. It’s a scene that doesn’t exist in the novel - the Grand High Witch is transformed in the dining room along with all the other witches in the book. As they navigate around a minefield of cheese-filled mouse traps on the floor, the Grand High Witch enters the room and threatens them. Joined by his fellow child/mice Bruno (Codie-Lei Eastick) and Daisy (Kristin Chenoweth), the hero boy urges Grandma to sneak into the suite - room 666 - and steal the large case of green potion. After boy-turned-mouse (played by Jahzir Bruno) successfully dumps the witches’ potion into their soup, transforming them into mice themselves, he and Grandma have an action-packed showdown with the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) in her hotel suite. The most prominent narrative revision is the climactic scene at the Grand Orleans Imperial Island Hotel. Zemeckis adapted “The Witches” with co-writer Kenya Barris, based on a script by Guillermo del Toro. I loved that things weren’t wrapped up with a pretty bow.” “Life doesn’t always turn out with a happy ending, but you have to deal with the cards that you’re dealt.

“I was happy that stayed true to the book,” says Octavia Spencer, who plays the film’s feisty Grandma.

The witches by roald dahl