Deadline calls the opening weekend of Snow White “bashful.” NBC News called it “sleepy.” The Hollywood Reporter calls it “alarming.” Most everyone else could have easily predicted the reaction to the new Rachel Zegler film, so perhaps the least applicable adjective would be “surprising.”
The Disney live-action remake of its classic fairy tale did manage to dominate the box office on a weekend without much competition. But given its production budget alone — rumored to be over $300 million — this looks like a disaster for the House of Mouse:
Disney’s live-action take on Snow White has come in with a global launch of $87.3M. From 51 material international box office markets, the update of the classic 1937 animation grossed an estimated $44.3M. Both domestic and overseas returns are below pre-weekend projections.
In like-for-like offshore markets at today’s rates (and excluding China), the bow is 16% below Cinderella, 19% under Dumbo and 33% off of The Little Mermaid.
Deadline tries to offer the most optimistic spin on the numbers. THR, on the other hand, sees “trouble“:
Trouble is a brewin’ for the controversy-laden Snow White, the live-action remake of the iconic 1937 animated film that put Walt Disney‘s film empire on the map.
The big-budget tentpole opened to $43 million domestically, enough for a first-place finish but behind even the most modest of expectations after getting battered by so-so audience scores and underwhelming reviews. That’s even less than Tim Burton’s Dumbo, which came in at $45 million in 2019. Overseas, Snow White took in $44.3 million for a global launch of $87.3 million after hoping to clear $100 million. …
Starring Rachel Zegler in the titular role and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, Snow White had been tracking to open to just north of $50 million, although Disney had been conservative in putting out a range of $45 million to $55 million. Even at $43 million, it is the second-biggest opening of the year to date behind fellow Marvel/Disney tentpole Captain America: Brave New World, which placed No. 3 in its sixth weekend with $4.1 million as it cleared the $400 million mark globally, including a domestic cume of $192.1 million.
Both Deadline and THR note that Snow White dominated the box office, but that was in part due to a lack of competition. Curiously, no other studio took advantage of the awful word-of-mouth for this film by positioning a real competitor against it. The only new major-release entry against Snow White was a new gangster film from Robert DeNiro called The Alto Knights, which bombed even worse than Snow White. It only earned a little over $3 million across 2600 screens, which makes the prospects of earning back its reported $45 million budget even dimmer than Disney’s ROI.
Even more curious: Snow White won’t face any significant competition in the youth market for another two weeks. That’s when A Minecraft Movie opens. Disney at least has a lot of runway for recovery, and in this competitive industry, almost suspiciously so.
What killed Snow White this weekend, at least? Was it a red-state boycott? Surprisingly, no, reports Deadline separately:
Snow White, per box office analytics corp EntTelligence, minted 60% of her ticket sales and drew 56.5% of her total attendance (3.1M admissions) in theaters located in Blue counties.
Now, these figures come with an asterisk. It stands to reason that Snow White‘s business would be driven by Blue counties simply because the majority of theaters in the U.S. reside in such zones at 53% (as determined by the 2024 Presidential election results) and generate 66.78% of overall movie ticket sales and 63.58% of cinema attendance. Consider that liberal leaning areas like LA, NYC and Chicago are top grossing B.O. markets.
At the same time, per EntTelligence, family and animated movies’ tickets sales come from 63% Blue counties and 37% Red counties while their attendance stems from 60% Blue counties and 40% Red counties.
That means that Snow White with 40% ticket sales and 43.5% admissions from Red county-based cinemas overindexed in such locations.
So don’t blame red-state areas for the film’s flop, in other words. People just didn’t get enthusiastic about this film no matter where they lived, at least not enough to put it on par with other Disney premieres. And small wonder, either, considering the two-year jeremiad by Zegler on the original film, its fans, the half of the country that voted for Donald Trump, fairy tales in general, Israel, and particularly everyone who didn’t cheer on Zegler. Remember this from a little over a year ago?
I don’t think Disney and Hollywood got the message yet: this is Disney’s Snow White star Rachel Zegler bragging that people will still line up to see her films despite her woke views.
“…At every premiere and everything I do, people will wait in line to see.” pic.twitter.com/rTJmwkOxlT
— Angelus iustitiae (@AIustitiae) March 23, 2025
Imagine what this film might have done had Zegler not conducted a two-year narcissism campaign but instead offered a more welcoming and universal appeal to audiences. Few people would have even bothered to discuss it in political terms until the movie opened and the more-woke elements (as well as the socialist subtexts that even reviewers blasted) came to light. The film would likely have gotten a big opening weekend and coasted off of that for a few months in theaters.
In a Sky News discussion today embedded below, Rita Panahi and Douglas Murray ask the obvious question. If Disney and its team wanted to write a girlboss fairy tale, why not just write a new story altogether? Greta Gerwig — who has some involvement in Snow White — did just that with Barbie, and it proved massively successful, both critically and commercially.
But that’s not the full story either. We’ve seen ‘modernized’ fairy tales succeed in the past too, such as 1998’s Ever After. Drew Barrymore reimagined the Cinderella fairy tale into a feminist power tale in which Cinderella and the prince rescue each other, with Leonardo da Vinci showing up as basically a fairy godfather in a film peppered with mildly woke elements. It could have been entirely off-putting, but instead was rather charming and reasonably well received. It earned $65 million in domestic BO ($98M worldwide) on a $26 million budget.
What’s the difference? Barrymore didn’t tour the country lecturing Cinderella fans about stalker princes and their lack of appreciation for girlbosses in medieval fairy tales. And Barrymore didn’t overlay a ton of CGI onto her “live action” film, either.
At any rate, it’s too soon to bury Snow White, but it’s not off to a better start than it deserves, either. Will audiences line up for Zegler next week?
