Due to its R rating, the Grimm tale played primarily to older audiences 57 percent of crowds were above the age of 25, and 55 percent were male.

CNN: Box office report: 'Hansel and Gretel' wins with $19M

Terry Gilliam had a good idea to re-create the origins of the fairy-tale-spinning Brothers Grimm but, as it turns out, the movie is yet another noisy, hyperbolic, digital farce, with people jumping in and out of the frame and turning into corpses and then coming back to life, trees endlessly moving around the woods, and much general tumult, and the movie quickly becomes tedious.

NEWYORKER: The Brothers Grimm

In the words of the English novelist Angela Carter, who wrote some thrilling Grimm-based stories, asking where a fairy tale came from is like asking who invented the meatball.

NEWYORKER: Once Upon a Time