The much-maligned remake of “Snow White” is on track to give Disney one of the weakest opening weekends in recent memory, amid the controversy surrounding the "woke" retelling of the classic German fairytale.
With an opening night a mere $16 million and an anticipated $45 million weekend haul across 4,200 screens, “Snow White” could end up costing the Mouse House studio hundreds of millions after it dropped nearly $250 million on production costs alone. When marketing and other expenses are factored in, the Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot-starrer will need to earn at least $500 million to merely break even.
The reimagining of Snow White was greenlit during the height of Hollywood’s politically correct phase where it assumed audiences wanted to see old classics remade with muted masculinity, woke story upgrades and every race equally represented. The “Toy Story” spinoff “Light Year” and “Strange World” pushed progressive themes in children’s entertainment and collectively lost Disney over $300 million in 2022 alone, according to Screen Rant.
The controversy began in 2022 when lead actress Zegler spoke candidly of her antipathy to the original story and the idea that a woman would need to be rescued by a man. Zegler even went so far as to suggest her costar Andrew Burnap, who plays Prince Charming, could be cut from the film. Then in 2024, Ziegler expressed her contempt for roughly half the country by saying the election of President Donald Trump represented a “deep sickness” and would yield “another four years of hatred.” Not to be outdone in her self-righteousness, Ziegler posted a teary-eyed confession this week on how audiences will still line up to see her saying, “at every premiere and everything I do, people will wait in line to see.”
The negative press extended far beyond Zegler’s constant commentary and an updated storyline. The debate on how to delicately handle a cast of dwarves by hyper-sensitive studio executives was openly mocked on social media. Actor Peter Dinklage took issue with Disney not doing a full progressive remake of “Snow White” and gave a profanity laced rant about how Disney wasn’t woke enough. The studio did their best to capitulate and cast a random set of racially diverse actors only to ultimately be forced to replace them with questionable looking dwarves done with video-game quality CGI.
Time will tell if “Snow White” can recover from a soft opening weekend to ultimately find success like Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” did earlier in the year, or become another woke casualty for the studio.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.