The plot thickens quite literally for the dueling Snow White films reported months ago. There is the Julia Roberts led adaptation versus the Kristen Stewart-Charlize Theron saga. And saga it will be! EW reports that production hasn’t even begun yet on Snow White and the Huntsman starring Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the aforementioned Huntsman, but producer Joe Roth says there are plans to have the plot span through a potential action-adventure trilogy “It’s meant to be the first in a series of films, This story will end, but there will be questions remaining for these three characters [Snow White, the Huntsman and the Evil Queen].”
Roth explains how his version of Snow White will play out “We retain the basic story in the same way we retain the basic story of Alice, a young girl meant to be the queen who is cast out. The Huntsman is a mercenary, in the sense that he’s a guy who is very able in the woods, more able than most anyone…” Roth adds “He’s a nondescript bounty hunter, as we first meet him. But he’s no killer…When he finds he doesn’t have it within his [heart] to cut [Snow White’s] out, the two become unlikely allies — at first fleeing the Queen’s forces, and then mounting a counterattack on her kingdom.”
The producer goes on to paint the picture as having more of a darker and edgier heroine at the center and possibly hoping to capitalize on star Kristen Stewart’s popularity with her previous work in ‘tonally similar’ films (which I refuse to name) “She starts out not a damsel in distress, but innocent, and after 11 years of imprisonment by the Evil Queen, she escapes and learns the ways of a warrior in the woods.”
Some more concrete details should be laid out when Snow White and the Huntsman presents at San Diego Comic-Con this month while principal photography is set to begin this August with first time feature director Rupert Sanders helping to add to its edgy mystique. From Universal Pictures, the film is expected to open June 1, 2012.