We all know and love the original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) film. It’s remembered as a classic and a film many of us grew up watching. But Disney always seems to feel the need to take the classics we know and love and turn them into live-action movies. Why is this?
Whether it’s “Mulan,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Lion King,” or others, all of these films have been remade into live-action renditions of their former glorious animations. The overall success of these live adaptations throughout the years led Disney to believe “Snow White” would join the list of these successful films. Unfortunately, the 2025 live-action Snow White was not nearly the success they believed it would be.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a depressing 42%, with critics like Christy Lemire, a top film critic, calling it “a mishmash and a mess of stuff. ” While the movie had a particularly high budget, and was estimated to have been produced for anywhere from $200-250 million, the movie has only pulled in $43 million domestically (yikes).
Compared to other Disney remakes that have been made, this film pales in comparison. For example, Disney’s live action “Cinderella”, starring Lily James, had a budget of around $95 million. In their first week, they managed to gross $67.8 million at the box office, and their total profitability came to about $542 million.
Now that we know that Snow White completely tanked in numbers, a few factors may have contributed to this horrific, and frankly epic, failure of a movie.
There is a lot of speculation and ideas for why this movie flopped so badly, and because it has only been out for around a week, there most likely will be even more speculation. However, let’s discuss why people believe this movie failed.
One reason for the failure can be attributed to Rachel Zegler’s publicity of this film. Before the live-action “Snow White” was released, Rachel made many controversial statements about the original 1937 tale.
Rachel stated in an interview, “It’s no longer 1937 . . . She’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be”.
Many fans of the classic film had a problem with these statements and thought that Zegler was being insensitive to the character. A Variety article went on to comment that, “They say all press is good press, but in ‘Snow White’s’ case, they were unabashedly wrong,” says box office analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations. “Too much negative controversy surrounded this film for years”.
Now, me personally, while I do understand where she was coming from, she insinuated that two things cannot be true at the same time; that Snow White cannot dream about being a leader, while also finding true love. As a woman hearing these remarks she made, it made me feel a little disappointed, honestly. I get that she wanted a new take on the film, but bashing the old one for focusing on love appeared to me as tone deaf.
However, this wasn’t the only comment for which Zegler has been under fire. During the press tours, she also claimed that the 1937 movie scared her. The clip of her making this comment was circulated all around the media and put Zegler in somewhat hot water.
I understand why Zegler’s comment was deemed problematic; publicly stating that the film you’re now starring in scared you as a child wasn’t a particularly honorable thing to share.
This, however, was not the only controversial aspect that may have been a part of the movie’s not-so-successful release. When the film was first announced, Disney had decided that it was only going to hire one actor with dwarfism to play one of the iconic Seven Dwarfs, and that the six other dwarfs would be created with the use of CGI. Additionally, Disney renamed them to “magical creatures,” instead of keeping their original moniker intact, which lots of fans have had issues with.
Not only did people think that the dwarves looked creepy in the movie due to the CGI, but many people with Dwarfism found issues with Disney’s troubling decision. As stated in this Forbes article, “Zach Roloff, star of the reality show Little People, Big World, said that Disney’s decision to rebrand the dwarfs and use CGI is a form of erasure of this specific disability community”.
After this backlash, Disney stated that they consulted with members of the dwarfism community about how to bring the seven dwarfs to life, however, many continue to share their disapproval for the CGI.
This film had the potential of being a great live-action rendition. However, when it came to their choices about the CGI and the lead actress’s outspoken disapproval of the film, it makes sense to me why it failed. This cautionary tale just shows how important it is for companies to listen to their fans and supporters when they have critiques instead of brushing them aside.
I think this is a learning opportunity for Disney and proof that it is essential to listen to their fans, listen to marginalized communities, and truly be more inclusive. All that Disney fans can hope is that after this, the company will continue to strive and work on making sure their movies do not miss the mark like this one clearly did. Now we just have to wait and see if the “Lilo and Stitch” remake will live up to the original, or fail just as miserably as this movie sadly did.