There’s been a bit of a battle brewing, with two films based on Snow White in pre-production, each racing to fill out its cast list and get into production. However while they’ve been setting themselved up at the same time, until now their release dates have been separated by six months, with Relativity’s untitled movie (previously known as The Brothers Grimm: Snow White) due June 29th, 2012, while Universal’s Snow White And The Huntsman was coming in December 2012.
However, realising being the second film out of the gate might not be a great thing, Deadline reports that Universal has now moved up their release date to June 1st, 2012, just four weeks before Relativity’s movie. The move comes shortly after Universal confirmed its main cast by hiring Chris Hemsworth to play the Huntsman (they’d had trouble filling that role, with the likes of Viggo Mortensen passing), who’ll join Kristen Stewart as Snow White, Charlize Theron the Wicked Queen, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ Sam Claflin as the prince.
Relativity’s film meanwhile has Lily Collins as Snow, Julia Roberts as the Wicked Queen and Anrmie Hammer as the Prince.
Similar films often go into development at the same time, but it’s rare for it to get this far. Universal’s move seems to be a last ditch effort to get Relativity to blink and call off their movie, and if they don’t, to at least be the first Snow White movie in cinemas (although officially they say it’s because things merely came together nicely so they could deliver the movie seven months earlier than planned). Whatever the reasoning, it would be daft to have two similar, high-profile films coming out within a month of one another.
That said, if you do have similar movies, being first isn’t always best. In 1998, Deep Impact his cinemas three months ahead of Armageddon, but despite both being about meteors heading for Earth, it was the latter that made the most cash by a significant margin.
It also means Snow White And The Huntsman will have a very short production cycle, as Hemsworth is busy with Thor for the next few months, and so shooting can’t begin on the fairy tale movie until after that, giving them a very truncated period to sort out all the effects.