edshitnrun: 'Red Riding Hood' Cheat Sheet: Everything You Need To Know

Sunday, March 13, 2011

'Red Riding Hood' Cheat Sheet: Everything You Need To Know

We've been following the fairytale reinvention since Catherine Hardwicke chose it as her first post-'Twilight' project.
By Eric Ditzian

Amanda Seyfried in "Red Riding Hood"
Photo: Warner Bros.

While Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart continued on with the franchise Catherine Hardwicke launched on the big screen, the director left the "Twilight" series behind in 2008, bouncing from one project to another until finally committing to one: the "Twilight"-esque "Red Riding Hood."

For a while, she'd been attached to Summit Entertainment's "If I Stay" and had been eyeing both an adaptation of "Hamlet" and a teen-focused fantasy pic called "Maximum Ride." But in the end, Hardwicke settled on "Red Riding Hood," with Amanda Seyfried in the title role, as her first post-"Twilight" project.

Now, more than two years after the debut of the film that made stars out of Pattinson, Stewart and — yes, god bless those ever-faithful Twi-fans — Hardwicke herself, "Red Riding Hood" is finally here. So let's flash back and bring you up to speed with an MTV News cheat sheet: everything you need to know about the new movie.

Leaving Forks, Finding Medieval Times
Hardwicke left "Twilight" in December of '08 and was promptly replaced by Chris Weitz for "New Moon." She held out hope of convincing RPattz or KStew to star in "If I Stay" or "Maximum Ride" but ultimately signed on to what was then called "The Girl With the Red Riding Hood," a project Leonardo DiCaprio was producing as a gothic reimagining of the familiar fairy tale.

Seyfried entered talks for the film in early 2010. Julie Christie, Gary Oldman and Shiloh Fernandez, as Seyfried's love interest, eventually came aboard as well. "I'm always kind of careful about what I choose," Seyfried explained to MTV News. "I had known [Hardwicke] kind of a little bit before, when I was dating Emile Hirsch, and I had been to her house before. That was years ago. And when I had met with her again, she talked about this movie. I completely fell in love with her idea and trusted her from that moment on, and I'm like, 'Yeah, I'm down.' "

A Fairy Tale for the "Twilight" Set?
The "Red Riding Hood" trailer arrived last fall, and after checking it out, we had only one question: Was the movie just "Twilight" with a cape? There certainly seemed to be a lot of similarities, from the werewolf to the overall gothic vibe. But in a recent interview, Seyfried rejected the comparison.

"It's a bummer that that's what's happening," Seyfried told us. "I mean, it does surround a girl coming of age in a love triangle, but that's a lot of movies. The truth is, it's an entirely different story."

Yet even Hardwicke, it seemed, found herself mixed up a bit. "We'd make jokes about her calling us Kristen and Rob and Taylor [Lautner]," Seyfried laughed.

Regardless of any confusion, though, Seyfried maintained that "Red Riding Hood" is an utterly original creation, neither a "Twilight" remake nor a strict retelling of the original fairy tale. As she put it in a separate interview, "Catherine Hardwicke has just completely turned this story into something edgy and gothic and dark, and she's clearly somebody that's very capable of turning something, everything into an extraordinary world, as we've seen before."

Check out everything we've got on "Red Riding Hood."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

Related Videos