It is the week of dwarf casting, with Ian Mcshane being the first one for Snow White & The Huntsman to be announced on Tuesday, Eddie Izzard, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan and Steven Graham’s names coming forward yesterday, and now THR says Ray Winstone is rounding out the casting as the final dwarf (probably).
As we’ve noted before, all the dwarves in the film are named after Roman emperors. McShane will be the groups leader, Caesar, Jones as a timid dwarf named Claudius, while Izzard is Tiberius, described as the biggest and burliest of the crew. Hoskins will play Constantine, a blind dwarf, and Graham is an angry-looking dwarf named Nero. Winstone meanwhile is playing Trajan, the twin brother of Marsan’s Hadrian.
There have also been rumours that most version of the script also include a young, sweet, unbearded dwarf called Gus, but THR says Winstone will be the last dwarf to be cast. That means either THR is wrong, or Gus has been cut. That wouldn’t be surprising, as Disney is famously protective of their Dwarves. They don’t own the rights to the Snow White story (nobody does), but they do own the characters of Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy and co. Gus did sound a little similar to Doc, and so may have been taken out in order to try and avoid any potential lawsuit.
Rupert Sanders is directing Snow White And The Huntsman, with Kristen Stewart as Snow White, Charlize Theron as the evil queen and Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman. The movie is a slightly different take on the story than usual, concentrating on the relationship between Snow White and the man told to take her into the woods and kill her. In most versions, the Huntsman just allows her to run off, but here he’ll help her learn survival skills and fight back. There is still a Prince though, to be played by On Stranger Tide’s Sam Claflin.
Snow White and the Huntsman is due June 2012.