Anne Hathaway is set to star as the Grand High Witch in director Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of the 1983 British children’s novel “The Witches” for Warner Bros. Coming off his criminally underrated Welcome to Marwin, Zemeckis will also write the film’s screenplay and produce alongside Alfonso Cuaron (Roma) and Guillermo del Toro.

Envisioned as an American period piece, The Witches is set in the Gothic South during the 60s and follows a young, orphaned boy taught to identify witches by his grandmother, a former witch hunter. The Grand High Witch rules over all witches and orchestrates a plan to turn children into mice to be killed like vermin.

Hathaway is coming off Nacho Vigalondo’s trippy sci-fi comedy Colossal. Her notable genre creds include the 2008 thriller Passengers, Tim Burton’s awful Alice In Wonderland, and Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar.