A story on The Playlist has Universal moving full-speed ahead with Snow White and the Huntsman, its re-imagining of the classic fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Tom Hardy (Inception) is said to be circling the lead role of the huntsman, which he hopes to fit into his schedule between the currently in production McG action comedy This Means War and his rumored work on Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film.
This revisionist take on the story supposedly adds a buddy movie twist, with the huntsman being hired by the evil queen to track down her runaway stepdaughter. When the huntsman realizes the queen intends to kill Snow White, he helps her escape and the pair go on the run. The studio is said to be courting Angelina Jolie to play the villainous queen, but that seems like high hopes for Universal and first-time director Rupert Sanders. Snow White is likely to be played by a relative unknown, with a massive search already underway in the UK. Filming should begin early next year, with a spring 2012 release being the likeliest of scenarios.
Mark Wahlberg is negotiating a deal to star in Ted, the R-rated directorial debut of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. The $65 million project is being described as a buddy comedy between a normal Boston guy and his CG teddy bear, which came to life after a childhood wish. MacFarlane will voice the bear.
Ang Lee has found his lead for Life of Pi, his adventure tale adapted from Yan Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel about a boy lost at sea with a tiger, hyena, zebra and orangutan for 227 days. Indian 17-year-old newcomer Suraj Sharma won the role following a search that saw 3,000 young men audition. Principal photography begins in January in Taiwan and India for what is said to be a large-scale, all-audience film utilizing state-of-the-art 3D technology. Fox 2000 has already set a December 14, 2012 release date for the film. [Variety]
Jennifer Lynch (Surveillance) is set to direct Visibility from a script by Allan Loeb (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Switch). The film centers on a detective whose search for the identity of a trauma-induced amnesia victim reveals a mysterious connection between the two men. Variety‘s Pamela McClintock calls the project a “supernatural thriller in the vein of The Sixth Sense and Primal Fear” but I recall no element of the supernatural in the latter (aside from Richard Gere’s freakish refusal to age), so I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this one plays out. Perhaps she meant it as a cross between the two? And is it just me, or has every supernatural-based film from the last 10 years been described as “in the vein of The Sixth Sense?”
