Snow White Vs. Snow White: Screenwriter Explains Movie Rivalry

It’s typical. You’re waiting for a gothic re-telling of SNOW WHITE and then two come along at once.

The first, SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, starring Kristen Stewart in the title role with Charlize Theron as the villainess, is being produced by Universal. The second film, which is currently untitled, features lesser-known Lily Collins alongside Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen in a Relativity Studios production.

Screenwriter of the latter project, Jason Keller, discussed the clash at the premiere of his upcoming movie MACHINE GUN PREACHER.

‘SNOW WHITE I wrote in December 2010, and that is unheard of, in terms of writing a script and going into production when it did,’ he confessed. ‘I’m just being very frank about it … at the end of last year, [Relativity] looked around, and they saw Universal was coming out with a SNOW WHITE. But they had a script that wasn’t really working, but they knew they wanted to try to keep that, so when they hired me, the first conversation we all had about that was, “How do we beat that other project?” So it was literally something like, “We want to beat that other project.” We are very, very motivated to do a SNOW WHITE project.’

‘I pitched them a take on it,’ continued Keller, ‘and in the same meeting I pitched them a take on it, Tarsem was in the room, he said, “I like that take,” the studio was in the room, they said, “We like that take,” and that minute, they commenced me writing — this is December — and they opened the art department, they opened the costume department, and they started scouting locations. All in the same minute! It hadn’t even been written yet! It was all because there was a derby race. And it all happened to work. I happened to write a script that was good enough in a very short enough period of time to get Julia Roberts, and we didn’t then have to wait for art and costumes because they were already going. So it was a super-cool way to write a movie.’

Despite the similar subject matter Keller claims that tonally the films will be world’s apart.

‘Ours is not dark. I mean, I know SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMEN is very intense, and lots of chain mail, and armor, and Kristen Stewart has a sword. Ours is an adventure, ours is funny — it’s a comedic adventure! And there’s some great action in it. It’s stunningly gorgeous, and it’s fun … Ours will be PG or PG-13, and the other one will probably be a R. We don’t know yet. But ours is nothing like theirs.’

However, a third SNOW WHITE movie has since been put into production. This time from Disney. THE ORDER OF THE SEVEN will be directed by Michael Gracey and sees Snow White in nineteenth-century China where she is protected by seven warriors.

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and the Untitled SNOW WHITE Project are expected to be released in 2012

Source: Variety