According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tarsem has cast the three main parts in his upcoming Snow White project. Confirmed this week were Armie Hammer as The Prince, Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen, and, drumroll…Lily Collins as the titular character. Fresh off her role in The Blind Side, Collins will look to carry her first major lead of her young career. The daughter of Phil Collins has a lot to live up to, but she apparently aced her auditions.
I for one am really excited for this film, which is being produced by Relativity Media and directed by Tarsem Singh, who helmed the criminally under-rated The Fall. If The Fall taught us anything its that location and color palettes are of utmost importance in fantasy films. Half of The Fall was a carefully constructed fantasy that took a band of misfit heroes on a journey through unbelievable locales. With a larger budget and a stronger graphics team there is no ceiling for Tarsem’s vision. Preliminary reports indicate that the film will be more comedy and adventure and less love story/musical, so Tarsem should fit perfectly in this scenario. Armie Hammer is the perfect guy to play a prince, and his rapport with the other characters in The Social Network proved he can do comedy alongside drama.
The x-factor here may be the performance of Julia Roberts as an evil queen, a role that she hasn’t exactly perfected in, like, any role before this. But Peter Fonda’s turn as a steely-eyed villain in Once Upon A Time In the West shows that breaking tradition and going against typecast might turn in a career-altering performance. And that’s something I can raise a toast to.
