How The New Witches Cast Compares To The Original

You may remember The Witches as the one '90s Halloween movie that seems like it's for kids, but actually haunts your nightmares. A new adaptation of Roald Dahl's dastardly novel is now streaming on HBO Max with a star-studded cast to rival the original. The seriously disturbing plot, however, is still the same.

It’s odd. Though the film is called The Witches, with emphasis on the plural, there really is only one witch with a significant role in the film — the Grand High Witch played by Angelica Huston in the 1990 film and Anne Hathaway in Robert Zemeckis’ 2020 adaptation. This isn’t like Hocus Pocus. There’s no magical trio of cronies. All of the other witches are nameless attendees at the Grand High Witch’s convention — or the one witch at the beginning of the old movie who literally uses candy to try and to lure children away from the safety of their parents. You may remember a “Miss Irvine” from the original. She’s the one that goes good at the end and is played by British comedian Jane Horrock. Unfortunately, there is no witch with that name in the new movie. The new movie has some new witch-y characters named Zelda, Consuela, Esmeralda, Saoirse, and Lana... but it's still really all about Miss Ernst.

That said, here’s who you can expect to see in The Witches on HBO Max and who played them in the original to jog your memory.