n the Grimm brothers' dark fables, deception is a necessary ingredient: a little old granny turns out to be a wolf; two children are lured by the promise of sweets,
only to be pushed into an oven. So it's fitting that the 
film these two inspired takes such delight in blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

  The brothers, renamed Will (Matt Damon) and Jake (Heath Ledger) in this tale, are con artists who travel from village to village pretending to protect townsfolk from enchanted creatures and conducting fake exorcisms. They travel to a cursed village where the townspeople are terrorized by dark fantasies that have begun to come true. Planning on pulling their usual scam, the two instead discover the curse-and the terror-are very real.

  The characters of Will and Jake pay homage to the original 
actors
Matt Damon
Heath Ledger Monica Bellucci  Terry Gilliam

director
Terry Gilliam

location
Prague, Czech Republic

outtakes
According to director Terry Gilliam, Matt Damon took tango lessons to prepare for this film. 

Grimm brothers, but the similarities only go so far. According to director Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys), "We owe the brothers Grimm a lot of thanks for the film but the story isn't about their historical lives. We've basically created a fairy tale about them."

  The script, penned by The Ring screenwriter Ehren Krugen, weaves the Grimm brothers' stories into a fantasy plot that plays with forces of both good and evil. "Fairy tales have always been the way the world exorcises its fears and its darkest imaginings and also the way it sustains its belief in happy endings," says the director. And as befits a filmmaker with an impressive collection of delightfully disturbing films, Gilliam states, "I believe fairy tales were always meant to be a little dangerous and disturbing, to stir things up."