Charlize Theron plays Queen Ravenna in Snow White and the Huntsman.

Superheroes are so last year.

Hansel and his feisty sister, Gretel, and the cast of characters from other classic fairy tales are quickly replacing the Batman and Robins and the Green Hornets.

"Fairy tales. It seems that's all that's being produced right now," says Claude Foisy. Foisy is a Montreal pianist and composer who now lives in Hollywood scoring all sorts of movies and TV shows such as The 4400, Pontypool and White Noise.

I caught up with Foisy at his studio where he was creating the music for Black Forest, a feature film directed by Frank Dinhut scheduled to be aired on the Syfy channel Feb. 25.

The movie is about a tour guide who leads unsuspecting tourists to the Black Forest in Germany, the original inspiration for the Brothers Grimm's scariest stories, such as Hansel and Gretel, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood.

Once in the forest, the hapless tourists discover all the old evil characters (witches, wolves, evil step-mothers and angry dwarfs) are alive and well -- and seeking fresh victims.

For decades the Disney Studios have taken fairy tales originally written as morality horror stories -- such as The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast -- and softened them.

No more. Two new terrifying versions of Snow White, including one with Chris Hemsworth playing the Huntsman who is ordered by the evil queen to kill the young lass (Kristen Stewart), are in the pipeline. So are scarier versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. Then there's the TV series Grimm.

"We are most definitely trending toward the dark side," said Foisy.

The McGill graduate said composers are finding themselves in new territory scoring music to these films.

"You can't use the same approach to a scary fairy tale that you would, say, for a normal horror movie," he said.

"Fairy tale music has to have a melody that's simple and fairly approachable that can be used throughout the film. By itself, it needs to be pretty and conjure up youthful innocence."

When things get dicey for the characters in the Black Forest, Foisy -- who scores original music from a series of synthesized sounds -- creates fear by laying clusters of vocals, brass and woodwinds underneath the playful melody.

"A dark tone with brass and strings that are half tones apart creates this tension. It's scary, yet still magical."

So is this a happily-ever-after for fairy tale movies?

"No, it won't last. These trends never do.

"There's always a flavour of the month, and right now it's dark fairy tales. But so many are being made that the market is becoming saturated and everyone will have to move onto something else."

Cirque du Soliel trop chaud for Brangelina? Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their brood attended Ovo, one of the many shows the Cirque has in Los Angeles at the moment. But when the atmosphere under the big tent became overheated, the famous family packed it in -- and split at intermission.