Tarsem Singh’s decidedly family-friendly Mirror Mirror opens this Friday, while Rupert Sanders darker and grittier take on the Snow White fairy tale, Snow White and the Huntsman, will be released in June. In this exclusive interview with the director, he discusses his approach to the film and desire to make the fantasy very real. 

The Fairytale Site

Snow White has undergone many makeovers since her Brothers Grimm incarnation in 1812, and none persists in the American imagination of today more than Walt Disney’s warbling beauty. But “Snow White and the Huntsman” gives the raven-haired princess a treatment far bleaker than the current rival versions in “Mirror Mirror” and “Once Upon A Time.” A five-minute trailer, which aired Saturday at WonderCon, teases a dark epic in which Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth, who play the film’s title characters, and a band of dwarfs lead a battle against Charlize Theron’s evil queen. It’s a bold feature film debut for director Rupert Sanders, whose previous work is primarily commercial. Hero Complex writer Noelene Clark caught up with Sanders to talk about the film’s magic, mythology and star power.

NC: We see such a bleak world in the new trailer for “Snow White and the Huntsman.” Can you tell us about creating this particular brand of dark magic?

RS: I wanted to make a big, epic medieval film with lots of knights in shining armor. I used to love history books as a kid, and so I was really kind of creating those massive films, and then within that, I wanted to create a sense of believable magic, so this is a world where people believed that the dark forest was inhabited by creatures. It’s not a fantasy movie, it’s definitely a fairy tale movie, but kind of that was the time when people felt these things existed.


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LA Times

NC: And Kristen Stewart is your Snow White.

RS: She’s quite stunning. She’s really good. First thing I saw her in was probably “Panic Room,” and then I saw her in “The Runaways” and “Into the Wild.” She’s an incredibly talented actor. I think a lot of people think that she’s Bella Swan because she played that part so well, and she really epitomized that character from the books. She was really strict with herself that she’d wear brown contacts, which is hard to act with those things in, because so much is coming from the eyes, but that’s what Bella Swan had. She’s very serious about what she does, and she’s incredibly gifted, and she’s incredibly intuitive, and she’ll just try different things. It was great to work with her. 

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LA Times

Thanks to @Mel452 & @FierceBitchStew!

Universal Pictures released a new trailer and extended preview for their upcoming, dark retelling of the classic Grimm fairytale Snow White earlier this week. Sprung from the mind of innovative commercial director Rupert Sanders, Snow White and the Huntsman has faced comparisons to Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror for the past several months. The release of the Disney film along with the footage from Sanders’ offering has made it clear that these are two very different films.

The trailer and preview answered many concerns that fans had about both the casting and tone of Snow White and the Huntsman. We had the opportunity to sit down with Sanders in a small roundtable discussion at WonderCon this weekend to discuss his aesthetic approach to the story as well as the backstory for the characters in the film.

Outside of the magic mirror, how much do you play with the magical elements of the tale?

RS: "There’s quite a lot. There’s a great sequence in the dark forest, which is really a forest that plays on the mind. Snow White runs in and she falls into a patch of spore-like puffball mushrooms that are hallucinogenic. She falls into that and instantly the trip starts to take her and she’s like trying to run away but then the whole forest starts to turn in on her. To me, as a hallucinator, when you do watch Snow White and that forest scene, they’re very hallucinogenic and I think we really tried to actually say that the forest is dangerous because it’ll play with your mind.

The first five minutes in the forest is quite a mental acid trip but designed to kind of protect itself. The forest protects itself. There’s a lot of magical realism in there, there’s a lot of great symbolism in the enchanted forest. We created a world that was protected by the dark forest where the Evil Queen’s poison hasn’t reached and that’s where the magical fairy tale exists, where there’s still fairies and strange creatures. So it’s a very rich journey, you go into so many different worlds and see so many different things and hopefully every scene you go to there’s a new discovery of something else that is happening.”

Can you talk a bit about casting Charlize Theron as the Queen and also just exactly how evil is she?

RS: “When you’re playing an Evil Queen you can go into pantomime very quickly. I think what she did so well and what really we all felt was the best kind of root for the character was that she wasn’t playing pure evil. I don’t think anyone’s born pure evil. Things happen to them growing up that make them who they are and I think that’s very true with her backstory that you see later in the film. She’s a very disturbed character who’s desperately got to find this heart because she needs to live forever. It’s as simple as that. She’s dead on the inside but she’s determined that she will avenge her family and the tribe that she was with that was constantly brutalized by kings and other kingdoms. She’s determined that the world will feel the suffering that she felt and she will stop at nothing to do that. She’s driven by some dark machinations but she’s also incredibly wounded and fragile underneath that. You can relate to her, because we understand the things she’s gone through and why she’s become evil. She’s not just sitting around with a white cat on her lap and hacking people’s heads off. Her evil comes because of how distorted the character has become. So she plays it very real and I think that’s really the success of the character. She’s incredible to watch.”

People were very skeptical when Kristen Stewart was initially cast in this film. But now seeing the trailer and all the footage, you really get why she’s perfect casting.

RS: “Yeah, I think we were looking for someone who was obviously a great actor first and foremost but also someone who’s incredibly physical. Everyone thinks she is Bella from Twilight. I think she’s such a good actor that she encompassed that role so well that people think that’s how she is. When you meet Kristen, she’s so far away from that character. I’d first seen her in ‘Into the Wild’ and I was really blown away. I remembered that she was the girl from ‘Panic Room,’ ‘Welcome to the Rileys,’ ‘The Runaways,’ and now ‘On the Road.’ She’s one those actors who does these smaller films and then she does these big movies and she’s really managed her career so well in that way. She’s incredibly spirited and very kind of wild and also she’s got this kind of this alchemy to her. You’re not quite sure what it is about her but on screen she’s just incredible. And when you see her act you
realize why she is such a huge movie star and why she’s going to continue to get bigger.”

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Screen Rant

Thanks @FierceBitchStew for the heads up!

Because neither Snow White and the Huntsman nor Mirror Mirror has been released yet, it has yet to be decided whether director Rupert Sanders’ adaptation of the Snow White story has the easier, or the more unenviable task of being the second of the two to arrive in theaters. But early trailers and images from both suggest that Sanders’ film is dramatically different than Tarsem’s, indicating that the success of the respective films won’t come down to their release date but whether audiences prefer MIrror Mirror’s funny, fantastical interpretation, or Sanders’ decidedly more serious approach to the source material.

anders appeared at the 2012 WonderCon in Anaheim, CA on Saturday to premiere new footage from the film, which opens nationwide June 1, 2012. After his appearance in front of a capacity crowd in the Anaheim Convention Center’s exhibition hall, Sanders spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the challenges of coming (chronologically) second to another Snow White interpretation, setting the tone for his film, and finding the right balance between classic adventure and contemporary values.

The Hollywood Reporter: This of course is your first feature after directing several big commercials with mini-narratives. Is the difference between commercials and feature films as big as people seem to assume?

Sanders: To be honest, no. A commercial is a sprint – you have an idea, you work on it, you work on a story, and then it’s like bang! You’re going for three weeks. This is a year, so it’s a very different [process,] and we were working exceptionally hard. We had 45 setups a day, and we had a big story to get in quite a small space of time, so it wasn’t a walk in the park, but when you’re doing what you love, you’re willing to take the knocks, and it was a lot of fun doing it.

Read more here:THR

via @Vonch

We want to wish a very happy birthday to SWATH Director, Rupert Sanders! 

You can see him today at Wondercon 2012 - Details here

Check out his website:
RupertSanders.com 

Kristen in Premiere Translation: 
Revisiting Snow White today is before all a look and attitude business. Fun, funny, and coloured to one side; dark, tortured and gothic to the other. Speaking of look, a true shock aesthetic is waiting for us in Pinewood's corridor when Snow White/Kristen Stewart heads to us wearing the medieval armor that she wears in the movie. "I didn't want to play a Disney-style heroine,says the actress directly. I mean, come on look at me, I'm more like Joan of Arc right? In our version, Snow White's a warrior." A warrior that spends almost the all time yomping in the forest next to a quiet huntsman (Chris Hemsworth, the handsome Thor) and bringing together an army to evict the queen of her kingdom. If you hoped a scene where she's baking an apple pie while humming Someday My Prince Will Come, you might wait a long time. " It's good 'cause when I was a kid, I was never dressed up as a princess. My thing was more Dracula", she says with a smile, aware of the impact that has that kind of statement when the world still see her as Bella Swan in Twilight.. "But we're not here to play differences game, she says just before she was going back to the set. Before you go see the movie, reread the Grimm's version and you'll see that we stayed very close to it."


Rupert Sanders in Premiere Translation: 
"Walt Disney made Snow White as an entertainment to watch in family, but our version will be much more darker. Anyhow, Grimm's tale is a material filled of wealth. As Shakespeare's plays, every kind of rereading is allowed."

(On the first trailer) "It's one of the first things we shot. A lot of key elements are in there: the mirror scene, the queen's bath, Ravenna's transformation into a crow... That allowed us to affirm our ideas and to show the visual language of the movie."

"I haven't seen one picture of Tarsem's version but our projects seem so different, that's why I'm not worried. It's not like two girls who arrive at a party and find out that they wear the same dress!"

"The idea of the eight dwarves was in the first version of the script. I found it excellent so I guess this was crazy enough."

"It's an amazing cast. With such actors, I could have shoot a gansta movie!"

"The names of the dwarves, Snow White's costume.. In the end, they're just details. We approach the same topics as the Grimm brothers: the obscure journey of a young girl who became a grown-up, the need to bring light back in a world infested by darkness. They are universal metaphors and, I hope, timeless." 

Thanks so much to @KSFrancecom for the scans & translation! :)

On Saturday March 17th  at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California

Time: 3:15-4:15 Universal Pictures: Battleship and Snow White and the Huntsman— Universal Pictures will present footage and special guests from two of its upcoming epic action-adventures: Battleship (May 18) and Snow White and the Huntsman (June 1). Battleship director/producer Peter Berg will be joined by two of the star's from the film, Alexander Skarsgård and Brooklyn Decker, to discuss the project. Snow White and the Huntsman's director, Rupert Sanders, will answer questions about the new movie starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth and Sam Claflin. Ballroom, Third Level

Read more at ComingSoon.net