Latest news with #SnowWhiteandthe
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Rachel Zegler's ‘Snow White' Gets Disney+ Streaming Date
"Snow White" partial poster featuring Rachel Zegler. Snow White — Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot's beleaguered live-action adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — is coming soon to Disney+. Directed by Marc Webb, Snow White opened in theaters on March 21 and debuted on digital streaming on May 13. The official synopsis for the movie reads, 'Disney's Snow White is a vibrant live-action musical reimagining of Walt Disney's groundbreaking full-length animated classic. 'Experience the timeless adventure as Snow White (Zegler) journeys into magical woods to escape her stepmother, the Evil Queen (Gadot), and meets the beloved Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Dopey, Grumpy and Doc who join her quest to restore the kingdom and bring kindness to the land.' Walt Disney Home Entertainment announced on Wednesday that Snow White will premiere on streaming video on demand on Disney+ on Wednesday, June 11. You must be a Disney+ subscriber to watch Snow White on the platform. The platform offers an ad-based Disney+ Basic plan for $9.99 per month, as well as an ad-free Disney+ Premium plan for $15.99 per month or $159.99 per year. Disney+ is also available in bundling packages with fellow streaming services Hulu and Max. Snow White had a rough run in theaters following a slew of pre-release controversies, including Rachel Zegler's criticism of the 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and politically divisive social media posts, and Disney's handling of how the seven dwarfs should be represented on screen. Disney ultimately settled on CGI dwarfs to represent the diminutive characters. Snow White, which is still in theaters, has to date earned $87.2 million in North American theaters and $118.3 million internationally for a worldwide box office tally of $205.5 million worldwide against a $269.4 million production budget before prints and advertising, according to The Numbers. The film earned a 40% 'rotten' rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 258 reviews. The Critics Consensus on the review aggregation site reads, 'Snow White is hardly a grumpy time at the movies thanks to Rachel Zegler's luminous star turn, but its bashful treatment of the source material along with some dopey stylistic choices won't make everyone happy, either.' Snow White, however, did receive a 71% 'fresh' score on RT's Popcornmeter based on 2,500-plus verified user ratings. Snow White will arrive on Disney+ on June 11.
Forbes
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Snow White' Skids To No. 4 At Box Office With Single-Digit Take
Partial poster of "Snow White" featuring Rachel Zegler. Business for Disney's Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, is taking another hit at the box office again this weekend. The $270 million live-action remake of the 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has been embroiled in various controversies over the past three years, including Snow White actor Zegler's sniping observations about the original 'cartoon' and divisive social media posts. Snow White earned $42.2 million in its opening frame at the domestic box office, far below early tracking projections. The film dropped 66% in business last weekend with a $14.3 million take for a second-place finish behind Jason Statham's action thriller A Working Man, which earned $15.5 in its opening weekend. Now, with the mammoth opening of A Minecraft Movie this weekend, it appears that audiences looking for PG family fare are all heading to the mystical realm known as Overland that originated in the video game Minecraft instead of the Seven Dwarfs' mine. As such, Snow White is projected by Deadline to earn $5.7 million at the domestic box office in its third-weekend frame for a fourth-place finish at the domestic box office. Projected by Deadline to finish ahead of Snow White are A Minecraft Movie with $130 million-plus domestically, followed by The Chosen: The Last Supper Part 2 with $7.2 million and A Working Man with $6.8 million. Following Snow White, Deadline projects that the horror thriller The Woman in the Yard will take the No. 5 spot with $3.7 million through Sunday. Snow White opened in 4,200 North American theaters on March 21 and maintained the same theater count last weekend. This weekend the film's theater count dropped to 3,750 venues. Should Snow White's box office estimate for this weekend hold, it will up the film's domestic tally to $77 million. Through Friday, the film's international gross stood at nearly $76 million. Rachel Zegler in "Snow White." Given the dismal box office performance of Snow White, Disney is reportedly putting its next live-action remake of one of its animated hits on ice — and not in a touring theatrical sort of way. On Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that the live-action version of Tangled — based on Disney's hit 2010 animated take on the Brothers Grimm classic fairy tale Rapunzel — was placed on hold by the studio. Disney had hired The Greatest Showman and Better Man director Michael Gracey to helm the live-action version of Tangled and now the film's future appears uncertain. While Disney hit the wall with Snow White, the studio still has a couple more live-action remakes of its animated hits on the way. The live-action version of Lilo & Stitch is due in theaters on May 23 and Moana leaps from the animated realm into live-action on July 10, 2026.
Saudi Gazette
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Saudi Gazette
Disney's Snow White film tops box office despite bad reviews
LOS ANGELES — Disney's live-action version of the classic fairy-tale Snow White has topped the North American box office chart despite a slew of underwhelming reviews. The movie has taken an estimated $87.3m (£67.5m) globally during its opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. Almost half of that figure came from North America. But that is below expectations for a film which reportedly cost more than $270m. The reworking of the 1937 feature length animation had seemed like a surefire hit before running into a series of controversies ahead of its release. The revamp of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became a flashpoint for social and political divisions, even before it reached cinemas around the world. That included some criticism of the casting of Rachel Zegler, who is of Colombian descent, as the heroine. There was also a backlash about Zegler's pro-Palestinian comments and about pro-Israel comments by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who plays Snow White's stepmother, the Evil Queen. And there is an ongoing debate about whether there should have been dwarfs in the film at all, live or computer-generated imagery (CGI). In mainland China, Snow White ranked outside the top five movies in cinemas, according to EntGroup's China Box Office website. In the country of more than 1.4bn people, it brought in less than a $1m in its first three days in cinemas. "I suspect that the multiple controversies have dulled the film's appeal," entertainment industry consultant Patrick Frater told the BBC. "That and the waning impact of many Hollywood productions in Asia which we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic." On the reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Snow White has a critics' score of just 44%, although the audience reaction 'Popcornometer' stands at 73%. Chief film critic for The Times, Kevin Maher, said: "Believe the anti-hype, it's that bad", but the Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney called the film "mostly captivating". With its creepy CGI dwarfs and muddled tone, Disney's latest live-action remake is "not calamitous" but is "a mind-boggling mash-up", the BBC's Nicholas Barber said. — BBC
BBC News
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Film review: Disney's Snow White has a major 'identity crisis'
With its creepy CGI dwarfs and muddled tone, Disney's latest live-action remake is "not calamitous" but is a "a mind-boggling mash-up". Live-action remakes of Disney cartoons aren't usually given a warm welcome by critics and commentators, but none of them has faced as much hostility as the new remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Are we succumbing to Disney Princess Fatigue? Maybe, but there's more to it than that. One issue is that the 1937 original was Walt Disney's first ever full-length animated film, and, while parts of it have aged badly, it still stands up as an exquisite, heart-lifting masterpiece. Remaking a revered, all-time great animation as a live-action film is about as sensible as remaking Singin' in the Rain as a cartoon. Another issue is that Disney's Snow White – to use its official title – has been attacked from both sides of the political spectrum: it has been condemned for being too progressive ("A Disney princess renowned for her pale skin being played by an actress with Colombian heritage? How dare they?"), and not progressive enough ("Caricatured dwarfs in this day and age? How dare they?"). Throw in the pronouncements on the Israel-Gaza war made by its stars, Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, and you've got a perfect storm of bad publicity. The good news for the studio is that the film itself is not so calamitous. It's not the worst of the studio's live-action remakes (that's Robert Zemeckis's straight-to-streaming dud, Pinocchio), and while it's not the best, either, it's undoubtedly the most fascinating. What's so unique about Disney's Snow White is that it seems as if some of the producers wanted to make an old-fashioned tribute to a feudal fairy tale, and the others wanted to make a revisionist, Marxist call-to-arms. Rather than settling on one option or the other, the producers apparently compromised by making both versions at once, so the results are like a mind-boggling mash-up of two different films. For the first few scenes, what we get is the subversive version. In an overlong opening sequence, we hear that Snow White (Zegler) isn't named after her skin colour, as the traditional story would have it, but after the blizzard that was blowing when she was born. It's not entirely clear why the King and Queen chose to name their daughter in honour of the weather, but considering she could have been called Drizzle or Gusty Wind, she should probably count herself lucky. The exposition continues with speeches and songs about the days when Snow White's benign parents ruled "a kingdom for the free and the fair", where "the bounty of the land belonged to all who tended it". This has to be the closest a Disney princess film has got to paraphrasing The Communist Manifesto. There are more of these radical ideas when Snow White's mother dies, and the King marries a woman who becomes the Evil Queen (Gadot). She warns her subjects of "a terrible threat beyond the southern kingdom", and then exploits their fears to nab the realm's riches for herself. With that, Disney's Snow White becomes one of the year's most bluntly political films – Disney or otherwise. And this is all before Snow White meets her handsome love interest, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), who is no longer a prince, but the Robin Hood-like leader of a gang of thieves. After he tells Snow White to "stop thinking and start doing", she sings Waiting on a Wish, a song about taking action rather than hoping that things will change for the better. It's a forceful riposte to Disney's earliest fairy-tale cartoons, and leaves you startled by the boldness of the director, Marc Webb, and the writer, Erin Cressida Wilson. As for those people who complained that the trailer felt a bit "woke"? Well, just wait until they see the film. Once Snow White flees from her homicidal stepmother and hides in the forest, though, her story suddenly turns into a faithful if robotic recreation of the 1937 cartoon. The forest itself looks like a Disneyland ride, with its artificially bright flowers and big-eyed woodland creatures; Zegler looks like a theme-park employee in Snow White's trademark puffy-sleeved dress; and the CGI dwarfs look like creepy animatronic puppets of the classic characters. Choosing to use these weirdly photorealistic digital avatars, rather than putting real actors on the screen, was Webb's worst misjudgement, but this section of the film still works well enough as an homage to the cartoon. Zegler, Gadot and their colleagues all do serviceable jobs, and while Disney's Snow White never matches the airy, twinkling charm of the original, the same could be said of every other Disney remake. But then it switches back into a revolutionary drama again. Snow White bumps into Jonathan's gang of rebels, and the two of them develop a sparky Princess Leia / Han Solo dynamic as they duet on the catchiest of the film's new songs, Princess Problems. What this means is that Disney's Snow White now has not one but two merry bands of forest-dwellers. You can only assume that one draft of the screenplay had the human outlaws, and another draft had the time-honoured, cottage-sharing dwarfs, and the producers just shrugged and decided to keep both of them. This was a bizarre mistake. Why introduce seven dwarfs if they then have nothing significant to do? Why introduce a magical mine of precious stones if it's not used in the story? Webb would have been better off keeping Jonathan's gang, and cutting the dwarfs – and not just because they look so grotesque. The film's split personality problems don't go away. Half of it is set in a grimy, gloomy land where Snow White wants to foment a peasants' revolt and restore a socialist utopia, but half of it is set in a chirpy, brightly-coloured fantasy realm of benign and beautiful aristocrats. Half the time, the characters are belting out overwrought, self-empowerment anthems by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the songsmiths behind The Greatest Showman. But half the time they're trilling the jaunty 1937 ditties by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey. Perhaps we should appreciate the value for money: the studio is in effect giving us two films for the price of one. But the producers should have picked a lane and stayed in it. As it is, Disney's Snow White keeps veering between two aesthetics and two eras, so it never picks up momentum. The story is cluttered, the tone is muddled, and the pacing is off. Again, that doesn't make the film a disaster. In some ways, the identity crisis is what makes it worth seeing. But this muddled production will be enjoyed more by politics and cinema students than by children who are hoping to be enchanted by Disney magic. ★★★☆☆ --
Telegraph
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How Disney's Snow White remake became a $270 million headache
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what's the most contentious blockbuster of them all? On any list of the most trouble-plagued releases in recent Hollywood history, Disney's live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would surely rank heigh-ho, heigh-ho highly. The $270 million-budget spectacle, starring Rachel Zegler as the storybook princess, finally hits cinemas this month after four years of seemingly never-ending online fury and negative news stories. From calls to boycott the film and attacks over its alleged 'f______ backward' depiction of little people, all the way to the sight this weekend of the movie's two biggest stars onstage at the Oscars, supposedly refusing to make eye contact with each other over disagreements about Gaza, this is a film beset by controversies. Controversies that, even with a magical, fortune-telling looking-glass like the one hung in the Evil Queen's castle, Disney could hardly have seen coming. After all, 2025's Snow White was meant to be an easy win for the studio. That's how it was regarded both internally at Disney and throughout Hollywood when it was announced nine years ago, on the back of other live-action remakes of Mouse House classics derided as lazy by critics but lapped up by audiences. 2010's Alice In Wonderland and 2016's The Jungle Book each surpassed a billion at the box office, with another, 2017's Beauty and the Beast, on the horizon when Snow White was announced in October 2016. It stood to reason that a live-action retelling of Walt Disney's first feature film would follow those other remakes' achievements and perhaps even surpass them. 1937's Snow White is the story on which a beloved entertainment empire was built. The prospect of this remake being released in time for the company's 100th anniversary in 2023 had insiders at the time whispering about the bolstered commercial potential of the project. What better moment for audiences to revisit the original Disney fairytale than during the company's centenary, with nostalgia for their romantic storytelling at fever pitch? Early expectations were high. Barbie auteur Greta Gerwig was initially hired as a co-writer – involvement that ultimately amounted to just a 'couple of weeks' work… I wrote some jokes,' she explained in 2023. Instead, the film – directed by The Amazing Spider-Man's Marc Webb, from a script by The Girl On The Train writer Erin Cressida Wilson – limps into cinemas years later than originally planned, bloodied and bruised from one of the most depressing production periods in memory. The battering began in 2021, with the casting of West Side Story actress Rachel Zegler as the titular princess. Her status as one of the brightest new stars in Hollywood, acclaimed by the likes of Steven Spielberg for her musical chops as well as her acting abilities, did little to quell the rage of political commentators incensed by the idea of an actress of Latina heritage playing a children's cartoon character once depicted as Caucasian, in a film released eight decades ago. Two years earlier, Black actress Halle Bailey had been savaged by trolls after being cast as Ariel in another Disney live-action remake, The Little Mermaid. Zegler's casting was further proof to the same self-described culture war activists that 'woke' Hollywood was waging some sort of war on whiteness, leading to 'harassment from a certain group of people,' Zegler told Cosmopolitan earlier this year. 'They were showing up at my apartment and screaming profanities… for being brown. For having brown skin [and] playing Snow White.' In 2023, Zegler was further attacked for appearing to criticise the 1937 Snow White, which she labelled 'extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for' in an interview at Disney's D23 convention. The original film was, by today's standards of consent, a 'love story with a guy who literally stalks her,' she explained. The upcoming modern rework of the tale, the actress announced, would feature a more empowered princess, who's 'not going to be saved by the prince'. This Snow White – no longer named such because of the fairness of her skin, but because she survived a snow storm as a child – 'dreams about becoming the leader she knows she can be if she's fearless, fair, brave and true,' she added, in comments met with scorn on social media. The problem was a perceived ingratitude. Here was a young star being handed the chance to play a hallowed character in our shared pop culture history, detractors complained. Instead of being excited at the prospect, Zegler was accused of being dismissive of the Snow White that fans had grown up watching. The 91-year-old son of the original film's director, David Hand, labelled her approach to the character 'a disgrace,' accusing Disney of 'making up new woke things. I think Walt and [Hand] would be turning in their graves.' American right-wing channel the Daily Wire meanwhile was so outraged that it announced that it would soon be making its own 'anti-woke' adaptation of the Snow White fairytale to rival Disney's – a project that has since been cancelled. A factor in the level of vitriol aimed at Zegler by conservative outlets was undoubtedly her vocal support for left-wing causes, crescendoing in November 2024 when Zegler tweeted her wish that 'Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace' – comments she later apologised for. But while there was sympathy from left-wing pundits for the actress herself following the abuse she received, there appeared little interest from the left in mounting a defence of the Snow White remake project as a whole. Instead, concerns were mounting on that side of the political divide about this new film's representation of little people. In 2022, Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage sparked a conversation about Disney's alleged hypocrisy in framing the film as somehow progressive, when damaging stereotypes about people of short stature are baked into the DNA of the Snow White story. 'I was a little taken aback by [the fact] they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White,' Dinklage told podcaster Marc Maron, 'but you're still making that f–king backward story of seven dwarves living in a cave.' Disney quickly issued a statement assuring fans that 'to avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community.' But early promo images of the movie, showing Zegler's Snow White surrounded by cartoonish CGI depictions of Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy and Dopey did little to convince doubters that the film would be the sensitive step-forward in representation Disney was promising. Would it not be a greater showing of commitment to the dwarfism community to use actual actors of short stature, instead of conjuring up caricatured versions of them on computers? Perhaps members of the dwarfism community should be relieved they were featuring in the film at all, some remarked. In July 2023, leaked photos from the movie's shoot in Bedfordshire, England depicted Snow White walking through an idyllic field, followed not by seven little people, but by an ethnically diverse mix of friends – leading some to speculate that the film was no longer Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Snow White and the Seven 'Magical Companions', to borrow a phrase Disney had been sprinkling into marketing materials around the film. None of this did much to dispel worries that this Snow White remake – from a pure filmmaking perspective – looked quite simply like a bad movie. Projects like 2019's The Lion King and 2022's Dumbo have been criticised in recent years for their flat visuals and reliance on cheap green screen, compared to the vibrancy and imagination of the animated originals. Early glimpses at Snow White, critics claimed, showed an altogether new garishness and lack of imagination. 'One of the most egregiously awful trailers I've ever laid eyes on,' was American magazine Forbes' response to the first promo for the film. 'From the nightmarish CGI dwarfs to the oversaturated visuals… Snow White combines everything wrong with modern filmmaking into one hideous monstrosity.' The cards, then, were already stacked against Snow White. Typically, in situations where audiences are expecting a movie to be bad, though, studios have an ace up their sleeves: the film's A-list stars, who will usually put on a united front and hit the promo trail together, telling outlets what a great movie it is, and what a fun time they had together making it. Disney, however, has so far been seemingly unable to play that ace in the campaign to promote Snow White. At least, not without distracting social media speculation about alleged animosity between Zegler and her co-star, Israeli actress Gal Gadot, rooted in their disparate stances on the current conflict in Gaza. Gadot – who plays the Evil Queen in Snow White – is a former IDF soldier and supporter of Israel. Zegler, meanwhile, frequently uses her social media channels to advocate for human rights in Gaza; accompanying her tweets celebrating the launch of the Snow White trailer last August was a reminder to 'always remember, Free Palestine.' As a result, speculation has been rampant about the pair's working relationship. At the Academy Awards, in a rare appearance together, Zegler and Gadot appeared on stage to present the award for Best Visual Effects. Within hours, social media platform TikTok was full of videos interpreting their body language as supposed evidence of acrimony between the co-stars. None of which makes for ideal conditions to release a blockbuster – least of all one with a $270m budget to try and recoup in a cultural moment where audiences seldom turn out en masse for movies in theatres anymore, unless they feel like a must-see event. The studio, though, can at least comfort themselves in the knowledge that they've been here before, on the eve of releasing a movie titled Snow White, with a sense of schadenfreude looking over proceedings as bad actors salivate over the prospect of the release resulting in embarrassment. To make the 1937 original, Walt Disney – who'd already experienced one bankruptcy – took out another loan, increasing his total debt to $1.3m (the equivalent of $25m today). Everyone thought it would be a disaster. The project was famously described by Hollywood folk suspicious of this rising mogul and his medium of choice as 'Disney's folly.' There had never been a cartoon before that lasted more than a few minutes and some predicted that his plan to make a feature-length animation would cause audience members' eyes to hurt from the strain of the bright colours for over an hour. We all know how that Snow White turned out. The film generated $8m at the box office – some achievement, considering that tickets then cost about 20c for adults, with kids admitted for a dime – and a movie-making empire was born. Can this Snow White prove a similar surprise? It's not out of the realm of possibility. Early tracking for the film does not indicate a box office bomb, leading to suspicions that a lot of less chronically online mainstream audience members are either unaware of or unbothered by the soap operas that have befallen Snow White's production. Experts are forecasting a $58 million opening weekend for the film, which, while not fantastic – Disney's 2019 remake of Aladdin made over $90 million across its first three days in cinemas – would not represent disaster, either. What feels inarguable for most parties is that the film's release can't come soon enough. Not because cinephiles are bursting with excitement to see the film – they're not – but because the story of Snow White's rollout has held up a mirror. A metaphorical one, rather than a magical, fortune-telling one like the Evil Queen's, but a mirror all the same, to the ugliness of online discourse and the hollow half-heartedness of Hollywood when it often comes to studios' engagement in progressive politics. After the challenges of Snow White, Disney may well be left whistling while they work out a new path forward for their live action remakes.
