NEW YORK (AP) ― Universal Pictures is continuing to pursue a sequel to “Snow White and the Huntsman’’ in the wake of Kristen Stewart’s affair with the film’s director.

Universal co-chairman Donna Langley said in a statement Wednesday that the studio is “currently exploring all options to continue the franchise’’ and that reports of Stewart’s exit “are false.’’

A beleaguered Stewart got a public defense Wednesday by Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster, who co-starred with a then-11-year-old Stewart in the 2001 move “Panic Room.’’

Foster wrote an essay for The Daily Beast in which she blasted the “gladiator sport of celebrity culture’’ and claimed that if she were a young actor today she would quit before she started.

“If I had to grow up in this media culture, I don’t think I could survive it emotionally,’’ she writes. Of life as a target of paparazzi and criticism, she added: “We seldom consider the childhoods we unknowingly destroy in the process.’’

Since Stewart, who played Snow White in “Snow White and the Huntsman,’’ and Rupert Sanders, its married, 41-year-old director publically apologized for a tryst caught in photographs, the future of “Snow White’’ has been uncertain.

The film was intended to launch a franchise, and its worldwide gross of $389.3 million was a promising enough start.

The Hollywood Reporter reported Tuesday that Universal was shifting the sequel to focus on the Huntsman character, played by Chris Hemsworth. The report claimed that Stewart was being dropped.

Universal declined to comment further on its plans.