“‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ Planned as First of a Trilogy”
This how frenzied Hollywood is about franchises: They’re turning Snow White into one. Per EW:
Snow White and the Huntsman may have more to overcome than just one clash with the Evil Queen.
Producer Joe Roth tells EW that he plans on making the folktale action-adventure movie into a trilogy. “It’s meant to be the first in a series of films,” he said. “This story will end, but there will be questions remaining for these three characters.”
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“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,” Roth says. “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. His job is to capture runaway girls, who are all fleeing the kingdom because of the queen. He’s a nondescript bounty hunter, as we first meet him.”
But he’s no killer, Roth stresses. Snow White’s bounty is the first time he has been directed to return with only a part of the missing girl — her heart. When he finds he doesn’t have it within his to cut hers out, the two become unlikely allies — at first fleeing the Queen’s forces, and then mounting a counterattack on her kingdom.
“He’s not a nice guy, but not only that he’s someone who has lost hope and lost faith. He has lost his wife, given up on everything,” the producer says.
This take on the character of Snow White is also different from the sweetly-singing princess we’ve seen before. “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,” according to Roth.
Note to self: Not only need to come up with post-modern take on classic fables, also need to provide enough narrative elements to create a franchise.
For more of the article in Entertainment Weekly, go here.