Exclusive First Look: The New Snow White Movie!

America’s Sweetheart embraces her inner bad girl in the upcoming still-untitled fantasy, which puts a dark twist on the beloved fairy tale. “Everybody knows Julia’s smile and the sound of her laugh, and she really brings that out and takes advantage of that and uses it in a different way for her version of the Evil Queen,” says Lily Collins (The Blind Side), who plays Snow White. “She used her magic and turned her smile and laugh into a creepy way.”

In this scene, Snow White shows up uninvited to a party. Unaware that it’s a costume ball, the plucky heroine improvises a costume: “When she comes, she is just wearing white. Some dishes at the ball are being served on a swan. She basically throws the food out of the swan head and puts it on her head so she can mix with the crowd,” says director Tarsem Singh. Academy Award-winning costume designer Eiko Ishioka did the costumes for the film.

“I wanted to make something exciting of these dwarfs,” says Singh, adding that these are not the dwarfs audiences are used to seeing. “These guys always travel around on stilts that make them like 9 feet tall. In this film they’re basically raiders that steal things from people that pass by their road.”

“We’d be shooting and she’s being extremely horrible to me, and once they yell cut, the first thing she says to me is, ‘Are you okay? I’m sorry, I hate being mean to you,'” Collins says of Roberts. “You forget that’s really Julia because she’s so good.”

Director Singh thinks The Social Network actor is uniquely qualified to play the royal role: “If you had to draw a prince, you’d probably draw Armie. He looks like a prince,” Singh says. “In real life he can be dark, he can be funny, he can be anything. I needed all that baggage to come with it. He was the perfect guy.”

“Brighton is the Queen’s henchman, who she sends to kill Snow White. He really does nothing bad ever, so of course he is the wrong person to send to go do it,” says director Singh, whose film fantasy is expected to hit theaters next March.

“She’s fantastic. What can I say? She so embodied the role,” praises director Singh of Collins.

After demanding that her guests wear white, the Evil Queen (Roberts) makes her grand entrance – as a red peacock. “It’s designed to impress the prince,” Singh says.

Singh raves about Lane’s performance as Brighton. “You could give him a s– line and he would make it hilarious. He has the best sense of timing that I’ve ever seen.”

In this incarnation of the fairy tale, the dwarves live inside a tree. When they’re not training Snow to fight or play card games, these dwarves walk about on stilts to appear taller. “They teach her a lot about empowering herself and fighting for what you believe in,” Collins says.

En garde! Hammer wields a sword as Prince Andrew Alcott. Unlike his dreamy alter ego, “in real life, he can be dark,” Singh says of the actor. “He can be funny.”

Collins says Roberts’s children came to visit – and weren’t put off by Mom’s evil role. “Her daughter would sometimes go under her dress and come out the other side. The dresses were so big,” she says.