logo
'Snow White' becomes Disney's worst-performing live-action remake in nearly 10 years

'Snow White' becomes Disney's worst-performing live-action remake in nearly 10 years

Yahoo20 hours ago

Disney's "Snow White" reboot is leaving a legacy it certainly doesn't want, becoming the company's worst-performing wide-release live-action remake in almost 10 years.
The 2025 remake of the original 1937 movie opened March 21 in the U.S. and Canada, and has struggled, earning barely $200 million worldwide.
The film's page on IMDB.com calls the movie "officially a flop," and says its $205.5 million earnings are "miles behind its massive $410 million total cost," including marketing, production, and other items. The site calls the film's disappointing performance "a financial blow which few expected to be this severe, especially with the losses already estimated at over $115 million, per Collider."
Joe Rogan Says Doge Should Look Into How Box Office Bomb 'Snow White' Cost $250M
"Pete's Dragon," a 2016 Disney remake of the 1977 film, came away with $143.7 million, $61.8 million less than "Snow White."
The "Snow White" remake was not without its controversies, which perhaps contributed to the film's poor reception.
Read On The Fox News App
Over three years before the film's release, one A-list actor with dwarfism had Walt Disney Studios reframe how it portrayed the classic seven dwarfs characters.
"Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage called out the studio for even considering taking a stab at portraying magical dwarfs in the modern era.
Speaking on comedian Marc Maron's podcast in 2022, Dinklage stated, "You're progressive in one way, but then you're still making that f-----g backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together. What the f--- are you doing, man?"
Disney then addressed the complaint and said the company would take a "different approach" to the seven dwarfs.
Rachel Zegler, the film's lead actress, faced backlash on social media for comments she made that were critical of the 1937 version of "Snow White."
"I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so," Zegler said during Disney's D23 Expo in 2022. "There's a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird. So we didn't do that this time."
Due to the controversy over the dwarfs and Zegler's comments on the original movie, Disney announced in late 2023 it would delay the release for "Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs" by a full year. It was originally slated to be released in March 2024.
Zegler was also vocal about her anti-Israel views.
Why Is Snow White Bombing? It's Not Just Because Of 'Woke' Controversies, Industry Experts Say
In an August 2024 X post talking about the official trailer for "Snow White," the actress wrote, "And always remember, free Palestine."
She also lashed out at people who voted for President Donald Trump, saying in an Instagram post, "May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace," adding, "F--- Donald Trump."
She later apologized, saying in part that "Hatred and anger have caused us to move further and further away from peace and understanding."
Disney also scaled back the Hollywood premiere event for "Snow White."
Variety reported "the studio won't be rolling out a robust red carpet like it usually does," and that the dozens of media outlets customarily present wouldn't be. Instead, coverage consisted of house crew members and photographers.
Fox News Digital reached out to Disney for comment on "Snow White's" box office numbers, but did not immediately receive a response.Original article source: 'Snow White' becomes Disney's worst-performing live-action remake in nearly 10 years

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Breaking down Craigslist ad seeking seat fillers on day of Trump's DC parade
Breaking down Craigslist ad seeking seat fillers on day of Trump's DC parade

Yahoo

time35 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Breaking down Craigslist ad seeking seat fillers on day of Trump's DC parade

On June 11, 2025, a screenshot of an alleged Craigslist advertisement seeking "seat fillers" for an event in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2025 — the same day as a military parade on U.S. President Donald Trump's birthday — began to make the rounds on social media. The purported ad read, in part: T-Mellon Events is looking for seat fillers and extras to provide their time for space maximization and attendance perception for an event taking place in Washington DC on June 14th. Extras and Seat fillers will check in on the morning of June 14th at 9:00 a.m. Extras are required to wear Red, White and Blue clothing and will be provided a RED hat to wear. GOLD accessories are acceptable as well. The team will advise the extras where to stand or sit according to the line of sight from a VIP viewing platform area. Extras and Seat fillers will be paid a flat daily fee and will be provided a lunch of fast food and encourage people of color and ethnic groups to sign up for maximum perception control and these individuals will be prominently displayed on the televised broadcast and local viewing screens to be seen by the VIP platform. It also listed compensation as a "flat fee of $1,000 paid in cryptocurrency - Provided by FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT LLC." One X post (archived) that shared the alleged advertisement garnered more than 1 million views and 28,000 likes as of this writing: Posts about the Craigslist ad seeking seat fillers also gained traction on TikTok (archived) and Facebook (archived). Dozens of Snopes readers emailed us and searched our website to ask if the Craigslist ad was real. The ad itself was real and was posted on Craigslist (archived) on June 10, 2025. Snopes was unable to definitively confirm whether the ad was a prank or posted by someone from Trump's camp, which is why we've left this claim unrated. However, several elements of the ad suggest it may have been intended as a joke. First, the company mentioned in the advertisement was listed as T-Mellon Events. Searches for "T-Mellon Events" on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo did not return any results directing us to the supposed company. Instead, they showed news articles and social media posts about the Craigslist ad. The alleged company name could be a reference to billionaire and Trump megadonor Timothy Mellon, heir to Pittsburgh's Mellon banking family. Snopes also looked into the photo in the ad and found it wasn't taken in the United States. Using RevEye, a reverse image search tool, we found the original image shared by The Associated Press on May 9, 2025, captioned, "Russian servicemen attend the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, Friday, May 9, 2025, during celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany during the World War II." The ad also said participants would receive a flat fee of $1,000 paid in cryptocurrency, which could be poking fun at Trump's crypto-related ventures. Fight Fight Fight LLC, the company listed in the ad as providing payment to seat fillers, administers Trump's meme coin. A customer support representative for the meme coin's website, told Snopes via an emailed statement: "It's fake, we have nothing to do with it." Snopes reached out to the White House and Craigslist for comment on the ad's authenticity, and will update this story if we receive a response. We also emailed an address associated with the ad and await a response. Social media posts that call out supposed Craigslist ads soliciting paid actors frequently pop up before events connected to Trump. Snopes investigated a Craigslist ad that offered to pay "minority actors" to hold signs at a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 2020, and another soliciting actors to play Trump supporters in Phoenix in November 2019. For further reading, Snopes also looked into claims that a Craigslist ad proves the 2025 anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles were orchestrated. "Seat Fillers Needed - June 14th - Constitution Avenue - DC - Talent Gigs - Craigslist." Craigslist, 10 June 2025, Accessed 12 June 2025. Debusmann Jr, Bernd. "Who Is Donald Trump's Reclusive New Mega-Donor, Timothy Mellon?" 21 June 2024, Accessed 12 June 2025. "AP PHOTOS: Russia's Victory Day Parade Begins." AP News, 9 May 2025, Accessed 12 June 2025. Weissert, Will, and Alan Suderman. "Trump Hosts Dinner for $TRUMP Meme Coin Investors, Raising Ethical Concerns." AP News, 22 May 2025, Accessed 12 June 2025. Khalili, Joel. "Trumpworld Is Fighting over 'Official' Crypto Wallet." WIRED, 4 June 2025, Accessed 12 June 2025. Ibrahim, Nur. "Did a Craigslist Ad Seek 'Minority Actors' for Trump's Tulsa Rally?" Snopes, 15 June 2020, Accessed 12 June 2025. Huberman, Bond. "Did a CraigsList Ad Seek Actors to Play Trump Supporters in Phoenix?" Snopes, 22 Nov. 2019, Accessed 12 June 2025. June 12, 2025: This story was updated to include comment from Fight Fight Fight LLC.

The Cowardice of Live-Action Remakes
The Cowardice of Live-Action Remakes

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

The Cowardice of Live-Action Remakes

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. There's a coincidental yet meaningful connection between two of this summer's buzziest movies. The new Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon are both remakes; beyond that, they're both live-action adaptations of animated films—each of which happened to have been co-directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders. Lilo & Stitch has made a fortune at the box office since its late-May debut; How to Train Your Dragon, which opens today, seems similarly poised for success. The two features are, if a little lacking in visual stimulation compared with their forebears, reliably entertaining. But taken together, they signal something rather alarming in Hollywood's ongoing crisis of imagination: The timeline for nostalgia is growing shorter. Since Tim Burton's big-budget take on Alice in Wonderland grossed more than $1 billion in 2010, the live-action remake has become an inevitable, pervasive cinematic trend. Fifteen years later, it seems that capturing similar financial success requires a studio to look at progressively more recent source material to work with. Disney's attempt to update the nearly 90-year-old Snow White failed at the box office earlier this year; the company shuffled efforts such as a new Pinocchio and Peter Pan off to streaming, despite the recognizable directors and casts involved. The muted response to these modern takes on decades-old classics perhaps explains the move toward reviving properties that resonate with much younger generations instead. The original Lilo & Stitch is 23 years old; How to Train Your Dragon, produced by DreamWorks Animation, is only 15. Next year, a remake of Moana will hit theaters less than a decade after the original film's release. Is that even enough time to start feeling wistful about it? Clearly, the answer is yes, given how audiences have flocked to similar adaptations. The sentimental fervor around franchises such as How to Train Your Dragon is particularly unsettling to me, because the first entry premiered when I was fully an adult; the DreamWorks canon (which also includes such films as Shrek and Kung Fu Panda) was established when I was past the ideal age to become invested. However, I've seen How to Train Your Dragon many times because my daughter is a fan; that intense familiarity helped me out as I watched the live-action version, looking for anything that might feel different about it—which would thus justify its creation. [Read: The lesson Snow White should teach Disney] Not so much. DeBlois, who also directed the two How to Train Your Dragon sequels, makes his live-action debut by adapting his own feature; as such, the end result is wildly similar to the earlier work. The new film is again set in a Viking village that is constantly besieged by different kinds of dragons. The plucky teen son of the chief, a boy named Hiccup (played by Mason Thames), befriends a sleek black dragon named Toothless and learns that fighting the beasts isn't the only answer. The actor who voiced Hiccup's father in the animated film, Gerard Butler, returns to perform the role on-screen; in all other cases, the film uses well-suited performers to replace the voice cast. To my own surprise, I liked the new version of How to Train Your Dragon about as much as I do its ancestor. Both, to me, are above-average bits of children's entertainment that struggle with the same problems: They start to sag near the end and suffer a little from their murky color palette. I got a little choked up at the exact same point that I do while watching the 2010 Dragon, when Hiccup and Toothless take to the sky together; the boy rides on a saddle he's made for his fire-breathing pal, and the composer John Powell's excellent score soars into inspirational mode, all strings and bagpipes. If there's a difference between these redone scenes and their inspirations, it's a remarkably minor one; only good theater decorum stopped me from pulling out my phone and running the two Dragons side by side. Hollywood is struggling to get people to buy movie tickets, so I understand the impulse to offer something that a broad swath of viewers already knows and likes. But there's simply no sense of risk in making something like How to Train Your Dragon—nothing that will convince said theatergoers that the medium has a future beyond recycling. Yes, visual-effects technology is up to the task of re-creating a cartoon on a larger scale and dotted with real actors, and yes, these redos tend to turn a profit for their makers. These shouldn't be the only reasons for art to exist. [Read: Why is Disney trying so hard to dilute its brand?] Lilo & Stitch, at least, diverges somewhat from its source material. Because most of the characters are human beings, its world seems easier to translate to one composed of flesh and blood. The film, like How to Train Your Dragon, is about a shiftless youngster (Lilo, a Hawaiian girl who has been acting out since the death of her parents) bonding with a fantasy creature (Stitch, a blue alien experiment designed as a weapon of destruction). The director Dean Fleischer Camp's tweaks for his rendition didn't particularly click for me, however. One amusing character (another alien who is searching for Stitch) is absent entirely, and the revised ending has prompted some pushback, though Fleischer Camp has tried to defend it. In theory, I should be pro-change, given that I found the carbon-copy nature of How to Train Your Dragon so irksome—except that Lilo & Stitch doesn't really commit to its big alterations. The animated versions of Lilo and her older sister, Nani, forge a closer connection after meeting Stitch and his extraterrestrial hunters; the live-action Lilo enters the care of family friends at the end of the film, so that Nani can go off to study in California. These adjustments to the girls' relationship are a bit bold, because the prior film is so emotionally focused on their frayed sisterhood, yet the remake quickly undercuts their separation with the revelation that Nani can just visit Lilo anytime she wants, thanks to some space technology that Nani has borrowed. Such a cop-out is the underlying, depressing reality with all of these remakes: No change can be too daring, no update too significant. It's heartening that Sanders, a co-director of the original Dragon and Stitch, is one of the few people working in animation who's still committed to innovation. Last year, he directed The Wild Robot; much like How to Train Your Dragon, it is an adaptation of a children's book upon which Sanders found an exciting visual spin. The movie was a critical success, a box-office hit, and an Academy Award nominee. Cinema needs more entries like The Wild Robot—novel works that take chances and trust the audience to follow along. If nothing else, they provide fodder for more live-action remakes in the near future. Hollywood can't have these nostalgic adaptations without something to redo in the first place. Article originally published at The Atlantic

Trump Lawyers Confirm They Are in ‘Active Settlement Discussions' With Paramount Over President's ‘60 Minutes' Lawsuit
Trump Lawyers Confirm They Are in ‘Active Settlement Discussions' With Paramount Over President's ‘60 Minutes' Lawsuit

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Trump Lawyers Confirm They Are in ‘Active Settlement Discussions' With Paramount Over President's ‘60 Minutes' Lawsuit

Attorneys representing President Trump in his $20 billion lawsuit against CBS over the allegedly deceptive editing of a '60 Minutes' segment have requested an extension of court deadlines, citing the fact that the parties 'are engaged in active settlement discussions.' Multiple news outlets including Variety have reported that Trump and Paramount have been engaged in ongoing settlement talks. In a filing Friday on Texas federal court, lawyers for Trump and co-plaintiff Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas — together with attorneys for Paramount Global — said they were requesting an extension to court deadlines 'because the Parties are engaged in active settlement discussions, including continued mediation.' More from Variety Federal Appeals Court Pauses Judge's Order to Return Control of National Guard to California in Late Night Ruling PBS, NPR Could Lose $1.1 Billion in Funding After Trump's Rescission Bill Narrowly Passes House 'Blue Bloods' Spinoff 'Boston Blue' Casts 'Black-ish' Star Marcus Scribner (EXCLUSIVE) 'The Parties are not seeking to extend any deadlines regarding the pending motions to dismiss, and Defendants intend to file their reply on or before June 23, 2025,' the filing said. Media reports have indicated Paramount is prepared to pay millions of dollars to settle Trump's suit. The media conglomerate, which is seeking FCC sign-off on its deal to merge with Skydance Media, offered $15 million to settle the suit but that figure was rejected by Trump, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Trump's lawyers want at least $25 million — and they want '60 Minutes' to issue an apology to the president, according to the Journal article. In addition, Trump's lawyers 'threatened another lawsuit' against CBS over its news coverage amid the settlement talks, according to the WSJ report. Trump filed the lawsuit against CBS just days before the 2024 presidential election, alleging that a '60 Minutes' interview with then-VP Kamala Harris violated a Texas consumer protection law by misleading voters and causing Trump personal financial harm. His suit initially asked for $10 billion in damages. In February, the president amended the complaint to seek at least $20 billion. It's not clear how those figures were calculated. Last month, U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden sent a letter to Shari Redstone, Paramount's controlling shareholder, warning her that a financial settlement by Paramount with the president would be tantamount to an illegal bribe. In Paramount's March 2025 motion to dismiss Trump's suit, the company called the legal action 'an affront to the First Amendment' that is 'without basis in law or fact.' CBS News has maintained that the '60 Minutes' broadcast and promotion of the Harris interview was 'not doctored or deceitful.' In a May 28 filing opposing Paramount's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Trump's lawyers claimed that the '60 Minutes' editing of the Harris interview 'led to widespread confusion and mental anguish of consumers,' including Trump. CBS's 'conduct, including news distortion, constituted commercial speech which cannot by any reasonable interpretation be found to have constituted editorial judgment, and that speech damaged Plaintiffs,' the filing said. 'The fact that such commercial speech was issued by a news organization does not insulate Defendants from liability under the First Amendment.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store