7 Witches

The Witches is a 1990 dark fantasy film directed by Nicolas Roeg from a screenplay by Allan Scott and based on Roald Dahl's novel of the same name. The film stars Anjelica Huston and Mai Zetterling and concerns evil witches who masquerade as ordinary women and follows an orphaned boy and his grandmother, who must find a way to foil their plot of ridding the world of children. It is the last film project executive producer Jim Henson worked on before his death, with Jim Henson Productions co-producing the film and Jim Henson's Creature Shop designing and building the prosthetics for the titular characters and animatronic murids that were used interchangeably with real ones. Filming took place in Norway and England from April to August of 1988. The film's release was delayed following the dissolution of its theatrical distributor Lorimar Film Entertainment. The Witches was theatrically released in the United Kingdom on May 25, 1990, and in the United States on August 24, by Warner Bros. The film was a box-office failure, grossing $15.3 million on an $11 million budget. Although Dahl disliked its differences from the source material, namely the ending, The Witches received positive reviews from critics and developed a cult following over the years.