There are two interpretations of Snow White currently in the works, one with Brett Ratner producing, and the other by Joe Roth.
Ratner’s version will be named The Brothers Grimm: Snow White and Julia Roberts has expressed interest in playing the evil Witch.
RamaScreen describes it as:
The story “begins with the evil stepmother kills Snow White’s father and destroying the kingdom. Our heroine then bands together with a gang of seven quarrelsome dwarves to reclaim what is rightly hers”
“This is not your grandfather’s Snow White, Melisa went back to the 500 year old folk tale and put in some of the things that were missing from Walt Disney’s film. His dwarves were miners, and here they are robbers. There is also a dragon that was in the original folk tale. Walt made one of the great movies of all time, but ours is edgy and there is more comedy. The original, made for its time, was soft compared to what we’re going to do.”
The other project also based on the folk lore will be called Snow White and the Huntsman which has its own angle on the tale – and Charlize Theron has thrown her name into the hat hoping to play the evil queen in that one!
It’s about the huntsman who’s ordered to take Snow White into the woods and kill her but he chooses to let her go. They both get chained together and they both escape.
Now, they don’t fall in love, make no mistake, the huntsman is not Snow White’s love interest in this story, there’s still going to be a prince for that but the huntsman becomes her mentor, teaching her how to fight and survive.
While one is playing more on the original lore, the other is deviating wildly from the story.
Should be interesting to see these two films come out and stand as separate interpretations of the classic tale. And these two choices for the evil queen are equally interesting as I don’t know many films in which Julia Roberts plays the big bad, and the same could be said about Theron.
In either case, Snow White will have a lot to live up to if the mirror finds her more fair than Roberts or Theron.