EXCLUSIVE: Heading into the weekend, Disney‘s Snow White was being nicknamed Snow Woke in vitriol online circles, which begged the question how this princess movie would fare at the box office in a Trumpian era country that’s divided by blue and red states.
The Rachel Zegler-Gal Gadot live action take of the 1937 Disney animated tune bombed at the domestic B.O. with a $43M opening off a $270M production cost (before P&A).
Here’s what we can tell you. Snow White per box office analytics corp EntTelligence minted 60% of her tickets sales and drew 56.5% of her total attendance (3.1M admissions) in theaters that reside in Blue counties.
Now, these figures come with an asterisk. It stands to reason that Snow White‘s business would be driven in Blue counties simply because the majority of theaters in the U.S. reside in such zones at 53% (as determined by the 2024 Presidential election results) and generate 66.78% of overall movie ticket sales and 63.58% of cinema attendance. Consider that liberal leaning areas like LA, NYC, and Chicago are top grossing B.O. markets.
At the same time, per EntTelligence, family and animated movies’ tickets sales come from 63% Blue counties/37% Red counties while their attendance stems from 60% Blue counties/40% Red counties.
That means that Snow White with 40% ticket sales and 43.5% admissions from Red county-based cinemas overindexed in such locations. Further supporting this: Snow White overperformed in Latino and Hispanic markets like Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix. The Marc Webb directed, Marc Platt produced feature musical pulled in an overall hefty 30% Latino/Hispanic crowd behind 43% Caucasian.
That’s an interesting stat considering the uproar during early production over Zegler’s casting in the title role and her pushback against such trolls, writing “yes i am snow white no i am not bleaching my skin for the role (sic).” The Steven Spielberg discovered West Side Story actress also blasted the newly elected POTUS after his win over former VP Kamala Harris writing ““F*ck Donald Trump” and “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” That prompted a swift kick from Megyn Kelly and her pals on the Ruthless podcast (“There’s something wrong with this person,” said Kelly back in November about Zegler) with the actress apologizing for her opinions. As we told you, 21% bought tickets to Snow White per Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak because of Zegler and Gadot versus the 34% who bought tickets to Wicked because it starred Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
Despite Disney’s attempt to put its best foot forward with diversity in the casting of Snow White, the movie’s release comes at a time when many corporations, including Disney, are rolling back their DEI initiatives and policies out of fear of the Trump administration. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said before the weekend that company mergers could be blocked by the government due to their DEI policies.
“There was no red theater blockade due to any perceived controversies with Snow White,” said EntTelligence Chief Strategy Officer Steve Buck, “In fact the opposite, theaters in Red counties performed better than they would normally for a family/animated film of this size and scope.”
While we can’t deny that the Zegler and dwarves’ controversy didn’t impact Snow White, its ceiling at the box office can also be attributed to the fact that there’s a lack of demand for older Disney IP, not to mention there wasn’t a crossover audience for the film. Read, EntTelligence says 28% of the audience was under 13 for Snow White compared to say Barbie which pulled 14% under 13 on its opening weekend.
At the same time with all of this, box office sources, not just Disney, affirm that Snow White played evenly across the country. The highest grossing cinema for the pic was in a Red State: The AMC Disney Springs in Lake Buena Vista, FL which has collected $135K through yesterday.
While a prince’s kiss isn’t expected to revive Snow White at the box office, parents and young girls could give her a little lift in a barren spring break marketplace.
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