Universal wants to make Snow White and the Huntsman and they want to make it now. In a stiff competition with Relativity Media and their untitled Snow White project, Universal is already losing the release date race - it's being released June 1, 2012 while Relativity is releasing theirs on March 16th - but the production needs to start soon if they want to prevent the film from becoming a rush job. Just last night it was reported that Ian McShane had been cast as the lead dwarf and today's news shows that casting is moving quite quickly.

THR reports that Eddie Izzard, Bob Hoskins and Toby Jones have all signed on to star as dwarfs, while both Eddie Marsan and Steven Graham are in talks. Not using the same characters from the classic Disney animated movie, Izzard will play Tiberius (the "biggest and burliest dwarf); Hoskins will be Constantine (who happens to be blind); and Jones will be Claudius (a "timid" dwarf). The dwarfs played by Marsan and Graham are unspecified. The casting leaves one dwarf to still be hired. A twist on the classic tale where the huntsman trains Snow White to survive instead of killing her, the movie stars Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron and Sam Clafin.

I'm beginning to think that someone in the casting department watched Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides one too many times. Graham, McShane and Claflin all had major roles in the film, which has just become the tenth highest grossing film worldwide of all time. Let's just hope that Snow White and the Huntsman is a much better film