The film stars Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, and Lena Headey in a heavily fictional reimagining of the Brothers Grimm as traveling con-artists in Napoleonic French-occupied Germany, during the early 19th century.

The brothers eventually encounter a genuine fairy tale curse which requires courage instead of their usual bogus exorcisms.

Gilliam often had feuds with brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, which caused the original theatrical release date to be delayed nearly ten months.

The Brothers Grimm was finally released on 26 August 2005 with mixed reviews and grossed $105.3 million at the worldwide box office.

Long ago, King Childeric I came to the forest to build a city while his Queen experiments with black magic to gain eternal life.

The queen is working an enchantment to regain her beauty with the aid of her werewolf huntsman with a magic axe, crow familiars, and various creatures in the forest.

In the forest, Jake, Hidlick, and Bunst try a catapult as a possible way to get into the tower, but Hidlick and Bunst go back to the village where another girl named Sasha is getting water from the well and sees a crow fall in, she picks it up and the crow flaps its wings and sprays mud onto her face until her facial features disappear and fall into mud, giving rise to a mud monster, which swallows her before turning into the gingerbread man and jumping into the well, despite Angelika and Cavaldi’s efforts to save her.

French soldiers begin burning down the forest and Cavaldi represses his sympathy for the Brothers, but they are eventually saved by Angelika.

With the menace gone and their daughters returned to them, the villagers of Marbaden celebrate and give their heartfelt thanks to the Brothers Grimm.

[4] In October 2002, Terry Gilliam entered negotiations to direct,[5] and rewrote Kruger's script alongside frequent collaborator Tony Grisoni.

[6] After Gilliam's hiring, production was put on fast track for a target November 2004 theatrical release date.

[7] Weeks later, Bob Weinstein, under his Dimension Films production company, made a deal with MGM and Summit to co-finance The Brothers Grimm, and become the lead distributor.

Matt Damon joked that Weinstein "was kicking himself because halfway through production, Pirates of the Caribbean came out and Depp was all of a sudden a big sensation".

[9] Heath Ledger met Gilliam in November 2002 when Nicola Pecorini recommended the actor to the director, comparing him to Depp.

Damon "grew up loving [Gilliam's] Time Bandits, the way that movie created this weird but totally convincing world".

Predator and Van Helsing, The Brothers Grimm provided work for hundreds of local jobs and contributed over $300 million into the Czech Republic's economy.

The post-production conflict between Gilliam and the Weinsteins also gave enough time for Peerless to work on another film, The Legend of Zorro.

John Paul Docherty, who headed the digital visual effects unit, studied the animation of the computer-generated Morlocks in The Time Machine for the Wolfman.

[27] The Brothers Grimm was released in the United States in 3,087 theaters, earning $15.1 million in its opening weekend in second place behind The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

[2] The Brothers Grimm was shown at the 62nd Venice International Film Festival on 4 September 2005, while in competition for the Golden Lion, but lost to Brokeback Mountain, also starring Ledger.

The site's consensus states: "The Brothers Grimm is full of beautiful imagery, but the story is labored and less than enchanting.

"[33] Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post wrote that "The Brothers Grimm looks terrific, yet it remains essentially inert.

"[34] Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle felt "despite an appealing actor in each role, the entire cast comes across as repellent.

Will and Jake Grimm are two guys in the woods, surrounded by computerized animals, putting audiences to sleep all over America.

"[35] Peter Travers, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, largely enjoyed The Brothers Grimm.

"[36] Gene Seymour of Newsday called the film "a great compound of rip-snorting Gothic fantasy and Python-esque dark comedy".