Universal tried to have its cake and eat it too with “The Huntsman: Winter’s War.” Not only did the studio attempt to make a prequel/sequel to “Snow White And The Huntsman,” a movie no one really cared about to begin with, but it tried to do so without the titular fairy tale character played by Kristen Stewart. The actress was at the center of a storm of tabloid coverage during the making of ‘Snow White’ after she entered into a relationship with director Rupert Sanders, and the studio decided to move the franchise forward without the participation of the filmmaker and actress. However, it appears Universal offered Stewart an olive branch, albeit once she’s glad to she didn’t accept, given the thrashing the ‘Winter’s War’ received from critics and an underwhelming box office performance.
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Chatting with Variety, Stewart reveals that although she found out through the press she wasn’t going to be appearing in ‘Winter’s War,’ she was asked to appear in a cameo role.
“I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ We hadn’t spoken in a long time, but I didn’t know we had broken up,” she told the trade about her absence from the new film. And she was fairly chilly on the prospect on reprising her role in the sequel, evidently telling Universal, “I might just leave that be. I was really into that…So now I’m like … ‘Thank God.’ ” ZING.
“I read a few scripts,” she elaborated. “None of them were good. None of them were greenlight-able. And I had a meeting with Universal about the places where the story could go. Maybe Chris [Hemsworth] was more into it. I actually don’t f—ing know.”
But who can blame her? Stewart has much more substantive offerings on her plate, and will be walking the red carpet in Cannes for Olivier Assayas‘ “Personal Shopper” and Woody Allen‘s “Café Society.” The latter filmmaker spotted her talent without seeing her most famous movie: “Twilight.”
“I didn’t see her in the vampire movie,” Allen told the trade. “I don’t have a computer. I’m not on the Internet. I don’t know anything about any of that. I’ve never seen her, except in this Greg Mottola movie [‘Adventureland‘]. And in passing. I might be on the treadmill and surf through 60 seconds of the vampire movie, where she’d look so beautiful. Those kinds of movies were never of interest to me particularly. I don’t really know of her Internet life. If you told me she had 100 million followers or 2 million followers, it wouldn’t mean too much to me.”
That being said, Allen believes Stewart has a very bright future. “I think she has the look. She’s very young, very beautiful and talented. And if she just keeps her hand on the wheel and makes good decisions, she’s home free. She should have an incredible career,” he said. “She’s not someone you cast just because she’s beautiful. She can deliver. She’s got a sense of humor. She can give you the heavy stuff. She’s one of the crop of young actresses around now —like Blake [Lively] or Emma Stone, they are tremendous performers.”
So why should Stewart sweat franchises when she’s getting so many good roles from auteurs? You can see her in “Café Society” when it opens on July 29th.
