Disney's ‘Snow White' Ends Theater Run. How Much Money Did It Lose?

Forbes

8 hours ago

Cropped "Snow White" poster featuring Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler.
Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot's Snow White — Disney's embattled live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — is done playing in theaters. What is the breakdown of the film's losses?
Rated PG, Snow White was released in theaters on March 21, following more than three years of controversies, including but not limited to Zegler's criticism of the 1937 animated classic and politically divisive social media posts.
In addition, Peter Dinklage, the acclaimed Game of Thrones star born with a form of dwarfism, criticized the idea of Disney casting little people as the famed seven dwarfs from the famed Brothers Grimm tale during a 2022 interview with podcaster Marc Maron. Ultimately, Disney went the CGI route with the characters.
Snow White stumbled out of the gate on its first weekend in theaters, earning $42.2 million domestically, a disastrous number considering the film's $269.4 million production budget before prints and advertising. The princess movie's business dropped 66% in its second weekend in theaters — losing its box office crown to Jason Statham's $40 million crime thriller A Working Man — and business rapidly dwindled from there.
Now, roughly two and a half months after Snow White made its debut on the big screen, the film has finally completed its theatrical run. As indicated by The Numbers' weekly theater count list, Snow White's last day in theaters was Thursday, June 5.
According to the box office tracker, the film earned $347 on Thursday from 25 North American theaters to bring its final domestic tally to $87,203,963.
Coupled with the film's international ticket sales of $118,341,472, Snow White's worldwide box office gross comes to $205,545,435 against the $269.4 million production budget before prints and advertising costs.
Rachel Zegler in "Snow White."
Given the huge gap between the film's theatrical gross of $205.5 million and its production budget of $269.4 million, there's no arguing that Snow White ended its theatrical run deep in the red. The question that remains, however, is how muc those losses were.
To begin with, the production needs to split its ticket sales with theater owners, which generally is a 50-50 split. On top of that, the film has marketing expenses, as well as residual payments and other expenses.
In a post-mortem analysis by Deadline on March 31 — a mere 10 days after Snow White's release in theaters — the Hollywood trade publication crunched the numbers by forecasting that the film would finish with a worldwide box office gross of $225 million.
Operating from that number, Deadline projected the film would eventually 'clear $295 million in revenues' from Snow White, which included '$101 million in global film rentals, $62 million in worldwide home entertainment, $130 million in streaming and TV revenues, and $2 million from merchandise.'
Then, however, came the film's expenses, which Deadline estimated were $410 million for the production. In addition to the film's nearly $270 million price tag, Deadline noted that Disney spent $111 on global marketing costs and '$29 million in residuals and other expenses.'
As such, Deadline concluded that Disney would lose $115 million on Snow White. However, since the March 31 analysis was based on a projection of $225 million worldwide theatrical gross, the worldwide tally of $205.5 million as of June 5 means the studio will lose even more.
If there's any silver lining for Disney, the failure of Snow White is being followed by the success of the live-action version of Lilo & Stitch, which since its May 23 release has grossed $637 million globally against a $100 million production budget before prints and advertising, per The Numbers.
Better yet, the film is eyeing its third consecutive weekend at No. 1 at the domestic box office and is no doubt in the running to become the highest-grossing film of the summer if not all of 2025..
Snow White, meanwhile, will make its transition to streaming on Disney+ on Tuesday, where the studio no doubt hopes the film will finally find an audience.