Snow White
Disney
There’s a new piece circulating from Variety that seems to operate as some sort of post-mortem about Snow White, which has proven to be a box office bomb after a poor opening weekend showing.
The piece focuses on star Rachel Zegler and her anti-Trump, pro-Palestine statements she made on social media at a time where she was also promoting the film, a time where she was also enduring endless, racist harassment online. But the tweets were deemed important, and at one point, Snow White’s big-name producer, Marc Platt, actually flew to New York to speak with her about her “Free Palestine” post. She stood her ground, and did not delete it.
The message is very clear, painting a picture of a rogue starlet potentially sinking her own film with politics, with very little focus on the fact that the movie was simply…not good. The movie had endured multiple reshoots, which of course has nothing to do with Zegler’s politics, and the end result is effectively the literal worst-scored major live-action Disney adaptation. You can check the math on this pretty easily. Sorted by box office, here are the scores for each of those adaptations.
- The Lion King – $191 million, 51% critic score
- Beauty and the Beast – $174 million, 71% critic score
- Alice in Wonderland – $116 million, 50% critic score
- The Jungle Book – $103 million, 94% critic score
- The Little Mermaid – $95 million, 67% critic score
- Aladdin – $91 million, 57% critic score
- Maleficent – $69 million, 54% audience score
- Cinderella – $67 million, 84% critic score
- Snow White – $43 million, 42% critic score
- Mufasa: The Lion King – $35 million, 56% critic score
Certainly, there is some variance here and a few other rotten apples (tomatoes), but Snow White is the lowest, and has among the lowest audience scores as well. The Variety piece also raises the idea that Snow White is the “most iconic film in the vault” where even if Snow White as a character is well-known, this is remaking a film that is nearly a hundred years old, first released in 1937. It is no wonder the much more recent, much more beloved Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin all performed better.
SEGOVIA, SPAIN – MARCH 12: Rachel Zegler at the European event for Disney’s “Snow White” at Alcazar … More de Segovia on March 12, 2025 in Segovia, Spain. (Photo by Pablo Cuadra/Getty Images for Disney)
Getty Images for Disney
I’ve said in a previous piece that Disney will likely not have nearly as much trouble with its upcoming slate of live-action adaptations, which range from Lilo and Stich to Moana (again, not 90 year old movies), but that will have nothing to do with its stars or their commentary on politics. Zegler, often cited as one of the only bright spots in the film in reviews, is not to blame for this, and it seems pretty obvious what the real problems here were.
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