Snow White was released in March with muted fanfare, after months of controversy surrounding the casting of Zegler in the title role, the inclusion of CGI dwarfs, and comments relating to Israel and Palestine by both stars. The film’s premiere was scaled back and attended by only a small, specially selected handful of press, and the movie subsequently limped to a $205 million worldwide box office, which didn’t even touch its reported $270 million budget. Speaking about the catastrophic reaction to the movie, Gadot said:

“I have to say first off, I really enjoyed filming the movie. Really enjoyed it. I even enjoyed working with Rachel Zegler. We laughed, talked, and had fun. I was sure this movie was going to be a huge hit. And then it happened…the release in October and what followed, you know, this happens a lot in various industries, including Hollywood, there’s pressure on celebrities to speak against Israel. I can always explain and try to give context about what’s happening here, and I always do that. But in the end, people make their own decisions. I was disappointed that the movie was greatly affected by that, and it didn’t succeed at the box office. But that’s how it goes, you win some, you lose some.”

‘Snow White’s Stars Were Not the Problem

Despite the many headlines focused on Gadot and Zegler’s supposed feud while filming the movie, reportedly due to their differing stances on the Middle Eastern conflict, both actresses received praise from most audiences for their respective roles of the Evil Queen and Snow White.

The thing that offended most people were the changes made to the original story in order to bring it into modern times and…well, avoid offending people. Worked well, didn’t it? As one review from Parade Magazine put it:

“Snow White isn’t necessarily a bad movie, but it is certainly a boring, purposeless one. Was there any reason for Disney to make this aside from money? No, and that’s painfully clear from start to finish.”

When Snow White was originally announced, Disney was on a high from the billion-dollar successes of live-action remakes such as Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. However, those movies made very few changes to the animated films they were based on. Casting choices were mostly well-received, and all being from the 1990s, most of their core sensibilities remained acceptable. 1937’s Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, despite still being considered an animated classic, was far too short to be directly adapted into a feature-length live-action movie, and the issues raised by some about consensual kisses, stranger-danger and more, made the task of pleasing anyone with a completely reworked story an impossible task.

While Lilo & Stitch has proven that Disney’s live-action remakes are not completely dead, there is currently a lot of consideration going on behind the scenes to try and prevent a recurrence of the situation that led to Snow White’s avoidable failure. While we will still be seeing more live-action retellings of some classic Disney stories in the future, there may not be quite as many as there have been in the last several years.

Snow White

4
/5

Release Date

March 21, 2025

Runtime

109 Minutes

Director

Marc Webb

Writers

Erin Cressida Wilson, Wilhelm Grimm

Producers

Callum McDougall, Marc Platt