With the news of Hellboy 2 fading into the shadows, director Guillermo del Toro has some spare time on his hands. What better way to fill the void, than joining fellow Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron in exploring a mischievous coven?

According to Variety, the duo are working together on an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1973 book “The Witches” for Warner Bros. Dahl wrote my favorite childhood book, “Matilda”, which unfortunately made for a lousy movie-going experience. He had far better success with the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”.

Del Toro is adapting and directing, and said that his “Witches” adaptation would be “quite smaller but most likely very much designed”, alluding to the flashy 2005 Wonka remake. He says he has written 70-plus pages of what he expects will be a 100-page screenplay, and a starting date for principal photography has not been set yet. Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) will serve as a producer.

The story is about a young boy who is taken in by his chain-smoking grandmother after the death of his parents. He is hip to the inner workings of witches, and after he is transformed into a mouse, they set out to outwitch the evil-doing witches. If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because there was a movie released by British director Nicolas Roeg in 1989 based on the book. This one promises to have a different spin.