Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

The Order of the Seven

8/4/11 - Disney is making its own revisionist Snow White feature, a live-action project now called The Order of the Seven, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Commercials director and visual effects wizard Michael Gracey has been chosen as the man to helm what is being envisioned as China-set epic.  Andrew Gunn is producing.  The project focuses on Snow’s seven companions, who aren't as cute and jolly as in the 1937 classic Disney animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In fact, the project, which was initially known as Snow and the Seven and had scripts by writers ranging from Michael Chabon to Jayson Rothwell, is evolving into more of an original action film, with the Snow White elements being minimized.  In this iteration, the seven are a 19th century-set disparate band of international warriors belonging to a centuries-old order who have lost their way. Their meeting with an Englishwoman being chased by an ancient evil is the catalyst for their redemption.  While the project is set in China, the warriors will be from locales near (the U.S.) and far (Russia), and each warrior will have a unique fighting style. 

5/18/09 - Screenwriter Scott Moore said that he and writing partner Jon Lucas wrote a draft of a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs update called Snow and the Seven.  "It's a retelling of Snow White in British colonial China with seven Shaolin monks," Moore said.  Since the Moore/Lucas draft, new writers have been hired to tailor the script to potential star Natalie Portman.  "I guess they're flirting with Natalie Portman and have been meeting with her," Moore said. "They're now doing a draft for her character with a writer who's really good with character stuff. That's my understanding of it."  At least their draft was enough to attach a high-profile director, Moore said. "That was a really fun script, and we turned in a script that got Francis Lawrence attached and excited about it," he said. "That is out of our hands at the moment. We had a really good experience on that." Snow and the Seven is eyeing a 2010 release.

08/01/07 - Francis Lawrence will direct Disney’s live-action Snow White fairy tale.  Scott Rudin and Andrew Gunn are producing.  The story, a fantasy adventure, centers on a British girl being raised in 19th-century Hong Kong. When she realizes her destiny is to conquer an evil force, she must prepare to fight by being trained by seven Shaolin monks.

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