Announced last week, comedian Kate McKinnon will headline Clay Kaytis’ first live-action project The Lunch Witch. The family-fantasy film will be based on the YA book by Deb Lucke.
Two months ago, the script was optioned by Ambling Partners, and it seems with McKinnon attached, the project is picking up speed. The Lunch Witch story follows a woman named Grunhilda who is a descendant from a long line of witches, but finds that despite her ancestry, no one believes in magic anymore. So Grunhilda becomes a lunch lady, and forms an unlikely friendship with one of her students named Madison.
Kaytis is most well-known as an animator, working on films such as Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, and Tangled. Early on in his career, he worked as an ‘inbetweener’ (aka providing additional clean-up for animations) for Disney classics such as Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan. Recently, he directed his first film The Angry Birds Movie, an adaptation of the popular game. The Lunch Witch will be his first live-action project.
McKinnon, most well-known for her Emmy-winning antics on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, has been making a name for herself in the film world, recently starred in Paul Feig’s all woman Ghostbusters, as well as the holiday comedy Office Christmas Party, which was released this weekend. In the future, expect to see McKinnon in Rock That Body alongside Zoe Kravitz, Demi Moore, and Scarlett Johansson, as well as Women in Business with Emma Stone.
Given that the book The Lunch Witch doesn’t have a particularly large following (not compared to Angry Birds, anyway), one can expect that Kaytis has some unique ideas to bring the story to life on screen. Stay tuned for more developments on how he plans to bring this whimsical tale to life.
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