Snow White
Disney
Snow White did not impress critics with its 44% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but even with a higher 74% audience score, the movie is in fact currently bombing at the box office, at least according to these initial figures.
Snow White brought in $87 million in its opening weekend globally, with just $43 million domestically. That may not mean much out of context, but compared to the other slew of recent live-action Disney adaptations, that’s definitely in “bomb” territory, at least for now. Here’s the list along the same opening weekend time period domestically:
- The Lion King – $191 million
- Beauty and the Beast – $174 million
- Alice in Wonderland – $116 million
- The Jungle Book – $103 million
- The Little Mermaid – $95 million
- Aladdin – $91 million
- Maleficent – $69 million
- Cinderella – $67 million
- Snow White and the Hunstman – $56 million
- Dumbo $46 million
- Snow White – $43 million
- Mufasa: The Lion King – $35 million
There are very few ways to spin that. Snow White is close to the worst-performing live-action Disney adaptation ever, doing not even half or a quarter as well as the higher-up ones on the list, and reviewed more poorly than essentially all of them, which is no doubt a contributor here.
Snow White
Disney
The single bright spot of the film is said to be Rachel Zegler’s performance and her singing, but villain Gal Gadot is criticized roundly, as is the overall structure, script and directing of the film (and those horrifying CGI dwarves). Again, you can even see the unconventional adaptation, Snow White and the Huntsman, opened better than this.
There is one thing to note, however, that could be a glimmer of hope. The lowest film on this list, Mufasa: The Lion King, opened poorly, but over time, despite being an original production (which probably hurt it at the outset) snowballed into eventually making $717 million worldwide, a huge hit. But that feels like an anomaly rather than something that’s going to happen with Snow White.
The movie is bad, it’s adapting a 1937 film and not one of Disney’s most popular ones, despite the wide reach of the character. Not a recipe for success, and it has not found any so far. As for Zegler, the only good aspect of the film, from here she will go to play Eva Perón in Evita in London’s West End, a prestigious role after her Broadway debut in Romeo + Juliet (which I had front row seats for, and she was fantastic). But this movie? Nope, this is unequivocally a bad situation.
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