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.”
It’s an ambitious move by the Alice in Wonderland producer, who is in a neck-and-neck competition with a rival Snow White film starring Julia Roberts. Shooting is already underway on that movie, while Roth’s film — which stars Kristen Stewart and Thor‘s Chris Hemsworth as the title characters and Charlize Theron as her wicked royal highness — begins principal photography in August.
The two movies will open roughly two-and-a-half months apart next year. Roth’s movie debuts second, on June 1, but he’s hoping audience’s will be drawn in by a Lord of the Rings-style take on the centuries-old tale.
“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.”
