Disney's 'Snow White' wins positive first reactions: 'Quite charming!'
Disney's 'Snow White' wins positive first reactions: 'Quite charming!'
Show Caption
Hide Caption
'Snow White': See the first trailer with Gal Gadot, Rachel Zegler
Disney revealed the first teaser trailer for the live-action remake of "Snow White," starring Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler, at D23 Fan Expo.
There's still some magic left in 'Snow White.'
Disney's controversial live-action remake amped up the sparkle for a kid-friendly Los Angeles premiere on Saturday, where star Rachel Zegler, who plays the title character, went full-on Disney princess.
The 23-year-old 'West Side Story' actress donned a peachy-pink strapless taffeta gown with a belted, butterfly-embellished corset and a full skirt. She wore her hair in an upsweep and accessorized with a sparkling diamond necklace, drop earrings and rings.
She and co-star Gal Gadot (as the Evil Queen), who wore a sheer black lace gown with a ruffled overskirt, greeted and embraced young fans. Many were dressed as the beloved princess in instantly recognizable blue-and-yellow gowns.
Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox
The stars did not take questions on the red carpet, which was geared to moviegoers.
"I interpret people's feelings about this film as passion for it − and what an honor to be able to be a part of something that people are so passionate about," Zegler told Vogue Mexico last month.
The movie has come under fire for 'taking a different approach' in depicting Snow White's diminutive companions, the Seven Dwarfs, and casting a Snow White of Colombian and Polish descent, an ethnic contrast to the original 1937 character. Zegler further riled the faithful by comparing the cartoon prince's pursuit of Snow White to stalking.
But the handful of first reactions to the completed film, which arrives in theaters on March 21, were encouraging.
Variety's Katcy Stephan described Zegler as 'a shining supernova' and praised her for 'beautifully embodying the graceful, gentle nature of the OG Disney princess."
'It's a visual feast with show-stopping new musical numbers and, of course, dozens of enchanting animated animals,' she wrote. 'The screenplay wisely gives its heroine newfound depth through her fervent desire to become the leader her father believed she could be, and a love story that's sweet as apple pie.'
Screen Rant's Ash Crossan called the film 'quite charming!'
'The message lands well, the critters are adorable, and Rachel Zegler and her enchanting voice are stunning,' Crossan wrote. 'It almost got a full tear out of me, and I've never cried in my entire life.'
'Listen, I was worried, but let me tell you Snow White is PURE DISNEY MAGIC!' The DisInsider's Skyler Shuler wrote. 'This will end up being a lot of people's favorite live-action remake."
Matt DeGroot of Crooked Media offered similarly high praise. 'Despite becoming an internet punching bag Disney's remake of Snow White is actually mostly successful!' he wrote. 'Rachel Zegler is an absolute star, (most of) the new songs are catchy and beautifully performed, and the visual palette is sumptuous and vibrant.'
Critics' reviews, including USA TODAY's, will be out March 19.
Contributing: Edward Segarra, KiMi Robinson and Patrick Ryan
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
30 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
AMC makes major theater change that will frustrate customers
AMC Theaters (AMC) had a rough start to 2025. The theater chain suffered a major loss as it struggled to attract moviegoers, despite major releases such as "Captain America: Brave New World," "Snow White," "Wolf Man," and "Dog Man." In its first-quarter earnings report for 2025, AMC revealed that its total revenues fell by about 9% year-over-year, while movie theater attendance in the U.S. dropped by 11%. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter AMC also reported a net loss of $202.1 million during the quarter, which is higher than the $163.5 million net loss it suffered during the same quarter last year. Related: AMC announces generous offer to win back customers "Setting aside those first quarters directly impacted by Covid and its aftermath, the January to March industry box office in 2025 was the lowest it has been since 1996," said AMC CEO Adam Aron in the report. The dip in attendance comes after AMC's average movie ticket price in the U.S. reached $12.31 during the first quarter of this year, which is higher than the $12.19 average it reported for the same quarter in 2024. Movie ticket prices have been rising over the past few years amid inflation. According to recent data from The Numbers, the average movie ticket price in the U.S. was $11.31 in 2024, which is 3% higher than the $10.94 average in 2023. As prices increase, some consumers have been avoiding movie theaters like the flu. A recent survey from the Wall Street Journal found that 65% of consumers said they prefer to watch movies at home, while 35% said they prefer to watch films in theaters. Amid this trend, AMC has made a bold move to dodge further price increases; however, customers may not be thrilled about the decision. The theater chain has reportedly landed a deal with cinema advertising company National CineMedia to run more commercials before movie screenings begin, according to a recent report from The New York Times. AMC claims this deal will allow it to rely less on increasing movie ticket prices to boost its revenue. Related: Paramount makes drastic decision amid shift in customer behavior "For the past five years, AMC has sought out crucial revenue that is not reliant on the increase of base ticket prices," said AMC in a statement to the Times, adding "while AMC was initially reluctant to bring this to our theaters, our competitors have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their attendance." The move from AMC comes after its top rivals, Regal and Cinemark, signed the same deal with National CineMedia in 2019. AMC was also offered the deal that same year; however, it "flatly rejected" it due to its concerns that "U.S. moviegoers would react quite negatively to the concept," according to a press release. The deal is expected to make pre-show advertisements last, on average, 20 to 30 minutes long. It is no surprise that AMC is continuing to dodge increasing its ticket prices as it has recently made several attempts to make moviegoing more affordable for consumers, who are battling inflation and higher costs of living. A few months ago, the theater chain added a new A-List Classic tier subscription to its flagship subscription service AMC Stubs A-List. The new tier offers a lower-price plan for guests who prefer to watch a maximum of one movie per week at AMC Classic locations. It also made several tweaks to AMC Stubs A-List to attract more frugal customers, such as expanding A-List weekly movie access from three titles a week to four, and lowering the age eligibility from 16 to 13 to attract more teens and families into theaters. During an earnings call in May, Aron said these changes are "designed to ease the pain of a healthy price increase." Related: Disney CEO offers unexpected response to tariff concerns The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Hollywood enters AI scraping wars with new lawsuit from Disney and NBCUniversal
Disney (DIS) and NBCUniversal sued an artificial intelligence developer for allegedly infringing on their protected works, the first Hollywood corporate titans to join a mushrooming legal war pitting copyright holders against AI upstarts training their models with data scraped from the internet. In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in a Los Angeles Federal District Court, Disney and NBCUniversal said that AI image-creating platform Midjourney pirated images without authorization. Midjourney obtained copies of Disney's Star Wars, Minions, and other characters through unauthorized libraries containing works from two Hollywood studios, according to the complaint. Its software allows people to create images from the companies' popular fictional characters, the suit said. The companies included AI-generated images of characters ranging from Darth Vader and Buzz Lightyear to the Minions and Spider-Man. 'Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing,' Disney said in its complaint. Midjourney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company is defending itself in another federal case in California brought by artists who allege Midjourney illegally trained its AI image generation models on their copyrighted works. The latest confrontation expands the number of high-profile cases from copyright holders seeking to guard their works from the reach of technology firms. A question at the heart of all these lawsuits: Can artificial intelligence companies use copyrighted material to train generative AI models without asking the owner of that data for permission? Another such clash came earlier this week when social media site Reddit (RDDT) sued AI startup Anthropic ( a company backed by tech giants Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) that created the AI language model Claude. Reddit is claiming in the new lawsuit that Anthropic intentionally scraped Reddit users' personal data without their consent and then put their data to work training Claude. Reddit said in its complaint that Anthropic "bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry" and argues that "it is anything but." Anthropic said last year that it had blocked its bots from Reddit's website, according to the complaint. But Reddit said Anthropic 'continued to hit Reddit's servers over one hundred thousand times.' An Anthropic spokesperson said, "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously." Anthropic is also defending itself against a separate suit from music publishers, including Universal Music Group (0VD.F), ABKCO, and Concord, alleging that Anthropic infringed on copyrights for Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones, and other artists as it trained Claude on lyrics to more than 500 songs. Courts haven't settled on a definitive answer to the question of whether artificial intelligence companies can use copyrighted material to train generative AI models without permission. However, last February, the US District Court for Delaware handed copyright holder Thomson Reuters a win in a case that could impact what data training models can legally collect. The court granted Thomson Reuters' request for summary judgment, saying that its competitor, Ross, infringed on its copyrights by using lawsuit summaries to train its AI model. The court rejected Ross's argument that it could use the summaries under the concept of fair use, which allows copyrights to be used for news reporting, teaching, research, criticism, and commentary. One big name featuring prominently in some of these clashes is OpenAI ( the creator of chatbot ChatGPT that is run by Sam Altman and backed by Microsoft (MSFT). Comedian Sarah Silverman has accused the companies in a lawsuit of copying material from her book and 7 million pirated works in order to train its AI systems. Parenting website Mumsnet has also accused OpenAI of scraping its six-billion-word database without consent. But perhaps the most prominent case targeting OpenAI is from the New York Times (NYT), which in 2023 filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of illegally using millions of the news outlet's published stories to train OpenAI's language models. The newspaper has said that ChatGPT at times generates query answers that closely mirror its original publications. Last week, OpenAI called the lawsuit "baseless" and appealed a judge's recent order in that case requiring the AI developer to preserve 'output data' generated by ChatGPT. OpenAI and Microsoft are using a defense similar to those raised in other AI training copyright disputes: that the Times' publicly available content falls under the fair use doctrine and, therefore, can be used to train its models. Getty Images is trying to chip away at that same argument in lawsuits in the US and United Kingdom filed in 2023 against AI image generation startup Stability. The UK case went to trial on Monday. Stability argues that fair use (or "fair dealing" as it's known in the UK) justified training its technology, Stable Diffusion, on copyrighted Getty material. That same defense has hallmarks of justification that Google has been asserting for the past two decades to fight lawsuits claiming it violated copyright laws when pulling information into results for users' search queries. In 2005, the Authors Guild sued Google over millions of books that the tech giant scanned and made available in 'snippets' to online searchers. Google didn't pay for the copyrighted information but did provide word-for-word pieces of the copyrighted works in search results. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reasoned in a decision that Google's scanning project tested the limits of fair use but was 'transformative' and therefore protected under fair use law. In 2016, Getty Images sued Google over similar claims, alleging that Google violated its copyrights and antitrust law by displaying Getty's high-resolution images in Google search results. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Sutter Pediatric patients get a Disney surprise
( — Children and their families at Sutter Medical Center got a special surprise Tuesday, as they were treated to a tropical-themed party, a private screening of the hit new live-action 'Lilo and Stitch' movie and a visit from Stitch himself in full costume. 'Sometimes these events can really help them feel like they're not in the hospital,' explained Sara Anderson, pediatric manager of integrated therapies at Sutter Children's Center. 'We all remember going to Disneyland and we see a character, how special it is. But imagine being a child in the hospital and having a character come to you, and how that can just really lift your spirits. And we always focus on helping children be more comfortable while they're here. And this is just a natural way for them to have something to experience that really brings happiness.' The event was put together in partnership with Disney and Starlight Children's Foundation. Disney calls it a movie party in a box. Kids come away with souvenirs and memories to cherish. 'We wanted to bring the magic of 'Lilo and Stitch' to a children's hospital,' said Dvorah Waldman, director of corporate social responsibility for Disney.' It's incredible to see the joy on their faces and the happiness that it brings. And just a moment of happiness, a moment of joy in an otherwise really difficult experience for a lot of these kids and families.' 'It made me feel like I was in the movie just standing with him saying, 'Hi, my name is Grace and this is my friend Stitch,'' said nine-year-old patient, Grace, after meeting Stitch. 'Amazing, cool, awesome and ten out of ten.' 'It creates a very family environment for the hospital,' added Grace's mom, Jessica Stevenson. 'And with her having to stay here, it's a blessing that she gets to be part of this.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
