Those familiar with the age-old fairytale will not be surprised to learn that ‘Mirror Mirror’s spectacular climax is a royal ball to celebrate the marriage of Snow White and her Prince. Director Tarsem Singh wanted to heighten the festive atmosphere with a dazzling musical number done in classic Bollywood style.

He selected Nina Hart’s late ’60s pop song “Love.” “I had the song in mind from the beginning, but they kept telling me I wouldn’t be able to get the rights,” says the director. “Finally, right before we started shooting, it worked out. When I heard that Lily could sing, I had her record a version of the song for us. She was fantastic. We knew we had to incorporate her vocals into a big dance sequence.”

Choreographer Paul Becker came in during preproduction to design the number, which involves the entire cast as well as over 200 extras. “It starts almost without warning,” he says. “Lily suddenly breaks into song and dance and everyone else seems to be wondering what she is up to. But then slowly the Dwarfs join in and then everyone starts to dance. It’s just a big party.”

Becker designed the dance to resemble one of Hollywood’s unforgettable Busby Berkeley production numbers, with overhead shots capturing the swirling patterns of dancers below. According to Lily Collins, “It was a great time. It felt like a huge music video with hundreds of people dancing around me. We really let loose. I never in a million years thought I would be able to do a number like that. It was just amazing.”

The film’s music, which ranges fom haunting to exhilarating to poignant, was written by eight-time Academy Award winner Alan Menken, composer of a host of unforgettable scores for movies including four classic Disney animated treasures: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Pocahontas.

The subject matter of the film has something in common with those earlier projects, but the treatment is very different, according to the composer. “What’s unique about this movie is the visual beauty and sophistication of Tarsem’s directing, combined with the innocence of an oft-told tale,” says Menken. “It’s a new kind of fairytale—elegant and edgy and fun.”

Singh gave Menken two directives before setting him to work. “He told me to make the score my own,” says Menken. “And he trusted me to own the process. That kind of artistic freedom made it a lot of fun for me.”

The director also asked him to develop a “thematic” score, one in which the music would reflect and enhance the characters and the story. “That’s unusual these days,” Menken says. “He wanted big, broad themes and that’s right in my wheelhouse.”

For the innocent and gallant Snow White, the composer created purely emotional music, heartrending as Snow gets her first glimpse of the financially ruined townspeople or soaring as she fell in love with the Prince at first sight. “We didn’t walk any fine lines,” he says. “We went right for the primary colors in those themes.

“And I threaded the themes throughout,” he goes on. “The dwarfs are like the Marx Brothers at times, so their thematic material emphasizes the comedic. When we first meet the Queen in the court, we’re playing a very formal, Mozartian theme. The Prince himself is introduced with classic hunting horns that signify nobility.”

The net effect of Singh’s brilliant leaps of imagination is to transport both the film’s stars and the audience into a sparkling world of fantasy. As Collins says, “Everyone loves a good fairy tale. They create a space where you can laugh, where you can be scared, and where you can simply be amazed. Ours is a multi-generational story and that’s what a fairy tale is supposed to be, something that everyone can enjoy.”

Julia Roberts agrees, adding, “I think the audience is going to get lost in this film. I would love for them to just sit back and be transported somewhere else for two hours.”

Singh’s greatest hope is that the audience will be the ones to reap the rewards of the cast and crew’s meticulous efforts. “My primary goal with this film is to create a family movie that people will have a lot of fun seeing,” he says. “It’s been a great honor getting to creatively reinterpret this classic story, which has meant so much to so many generations. I really hope the audience enjoys what we’ve created.”

Image Courtesy of Mirror Mirror

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Against the backdrop of this meticulously imagined world, a gleefully physical adventure unfolds as a sheltered princess of ‘Mirror Mirror’ learns to adapt to life outside the palace walls. From her woodland hosts, Snow White begins to learn to stand up for herself in stirring action sequences. As always, director Tarsem Singh was concerned with authenticity. “I wanted actual physical fighting with real weapons and real aggression,” says Singh. “But more than anything, I wanted the actors to actually take part in the adventurous parts of this film.”

The film’s stars underwent months of intensive training for grueling action scenes involving swordplay, acrobatics, high-speed horseback riding and more. “It was five days a week, almost six hours a day of sword fighting,” says Armie Hammer. “And I had the blisters and the calluses to prove it.

I learned how to do a back flip with a sword in my hand, and a front flip with a sword in my hand, and a side flip and a vortex flip—all things that I never knew how to do before. I was always excited to see what we were going to be doing next. My favorite thing was riding the horses right on the soundstage at a full gallop.”

Lily Collins adds, “There was a lot of fight training in this film. We did sword fighting and fencing and wrestling and acrobatics and then physical training. We worked out in the gym, we ran, we lifted weights. It was really intense.”

Fight coordinator Jean Frenette taught the actors the basics of combat, step by arduous step. “There’s a progression to it,” he says. “It’s like boot camp in the beginning. The process of repetition helps the actors build up their confidence and skill level over time. We want them to treat it seriously but we don’t want them to over-train and burn out. It’s a lot like preparing an athlete for a competition.”

Stunt coordinator Marc Desourdy adds, “Lily and Armie were fantastic. They’re so coordinated and so talented. They learn very quickly. Lily was very keen on doing all of her own stunts. We put her to work doing flips and acrobatics. And we did the same with Armie. When you see them close-up, sword fighting, it’s all them.”

In the end, the work paid off in action sequences that appear effortless, says Goldmann. “Watching them on film, it’s easy to forget all the work that went into it. Lily and Armie rehearsed and trained, and rehearsed and trained. They put in the time so that when we shot these sequences, they came out perfectly.”

One of Singh’s cunning innovations resulted in a series of action scenes that require complex preparation and physical daring. Since the Dwarfs had been thrown out of the village because of their size, he thought, they might likely become fixated on their height. Trying to compensate for their stature, Mirror Mirror’s little men commit their robberies on stilts. Desourdy tracked down a group of daredevil stilt walkers in Toulouse, France, to train the actors to fight on stilts.

“They were amazing,” he says. “They taught our guys to walk, run and jump with stilts. The stunts that are performed on the stilts are absolutely sensational and unlike anything you’ve seen before. The audience is in for a treat.”

Image Courtesy of Mirror Mirror

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The filmmakers behind the fairytale ‘Mirror Mirror’ mounted a major casting search for an actress who would embody Snow White’s innocence and determination, spending a month auditioning roughly 300 young women before discovering Lily Collins. “The second she came in everybody knew Lily was our Snow White,” says producer Kevin Misher.

“She was cast on April 1 and when her agent called her 24 hours after she had read, she thought it was an April Fool’s joke. It’s so hard to find a contemporary actress who embodies the grace of Audrey Hepburn and the class of Elizabeth Taylor and seems untouched by contemporary vices. Lily seemed to embody the classic goodness that the character of needed.”

Producer Bernie Goldmann concurs: “Snow White is loved by nature and loves nature. As outwardly beautiful as she is, she is driven inner beauty. Young girls today are so sophisticated that at 21 they seem like they’re 35. But Lily seems so young and innocent. She projects genuineness, not only on the screen, but in real life as well, and that’s really what we were looking for.”

This telling of the story updates the character, according to Collins. “And I love the idea that we’ve modernized Snow White. She starts out as the familiar fairy-tale princess that everyone grew up knowing, wide eyed and naïve. She’s been locked up in her tower, unaware of what’s going on outside, but she goes on to become a girl who fights for what she believes in. Once she embraces everything she is, Snow is able to open herself up to the world and grow into a young woman.”

Collins believes the character has universal appeal. “I think every young girl and adult woman has a little bit of Snow in her,” she says. “We tried to do that with humor. It’s a comedic adventure for the whole family.”

Snow White’s suitor, Prince Alcott, has also been taken out of the realm of stock fairy-tale character and transformed into a more contemporary hero. Played by Armie Hammer, the Prince is an essential figure in the conflict between Snow White, who asks him for help in regaining her throne, and her stepmother, who is plotting to marry the handsome young man by any means possible.

“There are very few actors who can comport themselves with a sense of dignity and royalty, as well as provide the fun that the movie requires,” says Misher. “Armie walks that line between gravitas and a lack of self-consciousness in a completely refreshing way. He’s somebody who I think men will embrace as a guy they can relate to and women will fall in love with. That really is the definition of a classic movie star.”

Hammer, who stands six-foot-five and is classically good-looking, was made for the role, says Goldmann. “If there was a Prince of America, it would be Armie. He’s a very handsome guy with a very stately quality, but in this movie we see a whole other side to him. He’s so accessible and charming and funny. Everybody on set felt like he was their best friend.”

Julia Roberts agrees Hammer was perfectly cast. “First, he is just a lovely young man,” she says. “But we had a lot of very long scenes together and he was very prepared, and really funny in this part. He brings a great humor and earnestness to it. You just want to see more and more of him.”

The chance to work with Roberts was a huge attraction to the role for Hammer. “She brings all of Julia to it, which is fantastic. It was so impressive to watch her work, because she is so in control of her instrument. Every movement, every gesture, was so precise. Audiences will see some of Julia that hasn’t really been shown before.”

Initially, Hammer admits to some skepticism about playing “Prince Charming.” “It sounded so saccharine,” he says. “But I discussed my hesitations with [director] Tarsem and he assured me that I would help create the character.

He said he wanted to make a movie about finding courage, finding love, and finding your place in this world, infused with great humor and great acting. His enthusiasm for the project was infectious. He brings an unceasing effervescence to set, always putting a thousand percent into everything. You can’t help but be pumped up when you’re on set with him.”

Hammer found a character who is searching for purpose in much the same way Snow White is. “The Prince has all these tools,” he says. “Like any good prince, he’s been trained to fight and trained to dance. He knows his history, sciences and mathematics. He understands the world—but only on paper. He doesn’t know how it really works, so he sets out seeking adventure and finds a ton of it. He finds more than he can actually handle at first.”

Image Courtesy of   Mirror Mirror

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One of the most beloved stories of all time comes to life in the spectacular motion picture event ‘Mirror Mirror’, starring Lily Collins (The Blind Side) as Snow White and Oscar-winner Julia Roberts as the evil Queen. A fresh and funny retelling of the classic fairy tale, the film also stars Armie Hammer (The Social Network) as the Prince, Sean Bean (“Game of Thrones”) as the King, and Nathan Lane (The Birdcage) as the Queen’s hapless and bungling servant, Brighton.

After a beloved King vanishes, his ruthless wife seizes control of the kingdom and keeps her beautiful 18-year-old stepdaughter, Snow White, hidden away in the palace. But when the princess attracts the attention of a charming and wealthy visiting prince, the jealous Queen banishes the girl to a nearby forest.

Taken in by a band of rebellious but kindhearted dwarfs, Snow White blossoms into a brave young woman determined to save her country from the Queen. With the support of her new friends, she roars into action to reclaim her birthright and win back her Prince in this magical adventure comedy that will capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences the world over.

Age-old fairytale revived

An innocent young royal, a wicked stepmother, a charming prince and seven little men living in the woods—the elements of Tarsem Singh’s latest epic may seem familiar, but audiences will be surprised and delighted by new twists the visionary director has brought to an age-old tale in ‘Mirror Mirror’.

According to producer Bernie Goldmann, who collaborated with producer Josh Pate and writer Melisa Wallack to develop the initial concept for ‘Mirror Mirror’, they were inspired by a photograph depicting a live model as the fairy-tale heroine. “What we set out to do was to make a live action version of the classic fairy tale, Snow White, that had the feel, the size and the scope of an animated movie. We realized that it’s a great story that had never been explored narratively in a live-action movie.”

In looking for a director to turn the concept into reality, Goldmann says Tarsem Singh was the obvious choice. “Tarsem was the perfect filmmaker to direct this film,” says Goldmann. “He knows how to enhance a story with color and light and is very comfortable with the kind of scope we wanted for this movie. There’s no one else like him.”

For Singh, who was finishing up work on the action epic Immortals for Relativity Media, this project was a chance to tackle something he had never done before: a family-friendly movie that combines action, comedy and intrigue with his signature visual splendor. “This was one of the few projects I was interested in doing,” says Singh. “It’s a totally different energy from my other films and I was deeply interested in updating a classic and eternal story.”

With Singh on board, the script began to take shape as a stunning big-screen spectacle leavened with humor and romance. Singh and Goldmann decided that the best way to start the search for a unique take on the classic tale was by returning to the original story. They discovered a wealth of options. “The story actually has existed for five or six hundred years throughout Europe, in many different countries and different versions,” says Goldmann. “We were able to incorporate what we learned from our research into the concept for our movie.”

Singh explains: “Going back and looking at the original story was a very important process. There are thousands of different variations that have developed since it was first written. These variations provided us with many inspired ideas that were later used in the film.”

For example, in some of the early versions, the dwarfs earn their living as highway robbers. In the words of one of the film’s characters, they “steal from the rich—and keep it.” “We thought that was an interesting thing to go back to,” says Goldmann. “It gives whole other side to their characters. They’ve been marginalized by society and this is their revenge.

“In some of the stories, we also discovered a beast of sorts that lived in the woods and we decided to bring that into our story,” Goldmann continues. “Then we also expanded the role of the King and added a mystery surrounding him.”

In addition to historical incarnations of the Snow White tale, Singh plumbed his own considerable imagination for inspiration. “I knew right away that the bulk of this narrative was going to center on the relationship between the Queen, Snow White and the Prince,” he says.

Goldmann is confident the film will resonate with audiences of all ages and would like to see it take its place beside other big screen adaptations of classic tales. “Hopefully, this is a movie that will play for years as a perennial family favorite and redefine the story of Snow White.”

Image Courtesy of    Mirror Mirror

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