recently. The chances of making a sale are
akin to being struck by lightning in the midst
of an earthquake while completing a Rubik's
Cube blindfolded and underwater. Despite
these long odds, Evan Daugherty's spec script
Snow White and the Huntsman hunted up a re-
ported $1.5 million against $3 million if the
film is produced.
NYU with a few scripts," he says. "I came
out to Los Angeles and kind of failed mis-
erably. I had to move back home, and live
and eat for free while I wrote some more,
hopefully better stuff." The better stuff
came. Daugherty's spec Shrapnel won the
Script Pipeline contest in 2008 and caught
the attention of manager Jake Wagner,
who was with Energy Entertainment at
that time. "They sent me the top 10 log-
lines and said, `Hey, the script that won,
Shrapnel, we think it's the best script that's
ever come through here,'" Wagner recalls.
"They were absolutely right on. It's a phe-
nomenal piece of writing." Wagner signed
Daugherty and, after a bit of work on the first
act, sent the script around town. Daughtery
nabbed agent Tobin Babst at UTA and even-
tually landed his first writing assignment:
Grayskull, the reboot of the popular "He-Man
and the Masters of the Universe" franchise.
erty. "Literally, that week -- this was sort of
reactionary and knee-jerk -- but me and Jake
sat down and I said, `Well, I have this script
that's an alternate Snow White. Maybe we
should try and do something with it,'" he re-
calls. In the original story, the Huntsman was
a character sent to kill Snow White, but in-
stead he sends her off into the woods and is
never heard from again. Daugherty saw this
as a springboard for a new take on the classic
tale. "One of my earliest movie memories was
seeing a reissue of Disney's Snow White and
being very affected by the striking imagery,
especially the scariness of the queen," Daugh-
Huntsman. That word, `Huntsman,' is so
powerful sounding. [It seemed as though] you
could build a whole action movie around this
character. I just went in and sort of kept the
story the same up to that point, took a left
turn at the point where the Huntsman leaves
Snow White, and then crafted a whole new
story that incorporates elements from the
original, but hopefully spins them and plays
with them in an interesting way."
script out there. "I thought to myself, `Who
better than the producer of Alice in Wonder-
land?'" Wagner cold-called Palak Patel, who
runs Joe Roth's Roth Films, a producer of
Alice. "I gave it to him on a Friday," Wagner
recalls. "Monday morning, first thing, he calls
me and goes, `Dude, I love it. I think it needs
some work. Let me meet with Evan, give him
my notes.'" Three months and five or six
drafts later, the script was ready to go.
peting live-action project -- a script titled
Snow and the Seven -- but no one was espe-
cially worried since it had been in develop-
ment for years with little forward movement.
"What I didn't know was that there was ac-
tually a writer currently rewriting it and a big
director attached," Wagner says. The other
shoe dropped when another competing Snow
White project sold right before Huntsman was
to go out. Wagner recalls the panicky email
Daugherty sent about the sale of Melisa Wal-
sold to Relativity, with Brett Ratner produc-
ing. "It was exactly what we were working
on," Wagner says. Daugherty was terrified. "I
thought it might be over at that point," he
recalls. "Someone had beaten us to it."
mits. "At a certain point, you just have to go
for it. If a rough draft had gone out, maybe
it would have been more of a problem, but
the script went out in great shape with the
right producer and director. It wasn't looked
at as `development'; it was looked at as `let's
make this.'" With red-hot commercial di-
rector Rupert Sanders attached and the wind
at their backs, the script went out to the stu-
dios. The response was strong. "Over the
course of one week, literally, Joe Roth, Palak
Daugherty says. "Thankfully, I wasn't
there. I prefer to not be in the midst of all
that action. It's so intimidating."
and Rupert, but also saying that they
wanted to make the movie." Wagner
adds, "We wanted a progress to produc-
tion. We wanted a studio that really was
going to make the movie the following
year. We let it be known, through some
back channeling, what we were looking
they came strong. After a bidding war, Uni-
versal grabbed the prize. "They were like,
`This is going to be a 2012 tentpole for us,'"
Wagner continues. "They were talking
about the ride for their theme park. They
were all in: `We need this franchise. It's
going to be huge.'"
lize Theron?), Daugherty is finishing the
draft for the studio and marveling at his suc-
cess. "Some people have accused Snow White
and the Huntsman of being a sort of cynical
reading of the marketplace," he says. "This is
a script where I felt like I really tapped in and
connected to the main characters. It was
very heartfelt. You have to really feel a deep
connection to the characters you're writing.
I think it's only when that happens that the
script becomes really engaging and the char-
acters jump off the page. Write stuff that
you're passionate about. If you believe in it
and stick with it, there's a good chance that
it will pay off."
Huntsman braves a malevolent spec
marketplace to find a fairy tale ending.