Reports are still a little confused (you can read a few of them here, here and here), but word is hitting the nets that Natalie Portman has signed on for her next film project, and it makes V for Vendetta sound positively levelheaded. She’ll be playing Snow White in a film from Walt Disney Studios that’s a sequel to the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Here’s what is known thus far:

• The working title, Snow and the Seven, might or might not be the title when the film is actually released;
• The script has passed through the hands of multiple writers, one of whom might or might not be Michael Chabon (Kavalier & Clay, Summerlands);
• The director is Yuen Woo-ping, who choreographed the fight scenes in the Matrix movies, the Kill Bill movies, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among others—or, more likely, the director is Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend) and Yuen will handle the presumably kick-ass action sequences;
• The story is set in China in a) the 1880s; b) thousands of years in the future; or c) in a timeless, mythic past. A young woman (Portman) realizes she must confront an evil force who might or might not be her stepmother, which is trying to recover the fragments of its shattered magic mirror, guarded by the warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple. Jet Li is one of her seven guardians, who might or might not be dwarfs.

The transgressive elements here are almost too numerous to count. A Snow White sequel that’s a martial arts movie? A martial arts movie from Disney?? And then there’s the whole issue of Natalie Portman’s involvement. Most likely the project will be either an interesting success or a horrendous failure. Let’s just hope Portman doesn’t reprise her role as Princess Amygdala or whatever her name was.