According to The Hollywood Reporter, Robert Zemeckis is set to direct a new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, taking over for previously attached director Guillermo del Toro—who is famously good at putting his name on projects that he never actually gets around to making. Del Toro will still be a producer on the film, but Zemeckis is going to be writing it now with his writing partner Jack Rapke. The original book is about a young boy who goes to live with his grandmother after his parents die, and he quickly learns that she’s a retired witch hunter. Naturally, he then stumbles upon a massive witch conspiracy that involves turning children into mice, and in the process of stopping it, he gets turned into a mouse.
The book was previously made into a movie in 1990 with Anjelica Huston as the main witch, but Roald Dahl himself once called that adaptation “utterly appalling” (possibly due to its revised, happier ending) so it seems fair for Zemeckis to try his hand at a new version.