GET WOKE, GO…: How Disney’s Snow White remake became a $270 million headache.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what’s the most contentious blockbuster of them all? On any list of the most trouble-plagued releases in recent Hollywood history, Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would surely rank heigh-ho, heigh-ho highly. The $270 million-budget spectacle, starring Rachel Zegler as the storybook princess, finally hits cinemas this month after four years of seemingly never-ending online fury and negative news stories.
From calls to boycott the film and attacks over its alleged “f______ backward” depiction of little people, all the way to the sight this weekend of the movie’s two biggest stars onstage at the Oscars, supposedly refusing to make eye contact with each other over disagreements about Gaza, this is a film beset by controversies. Controversies that, even with a magical, fortune-telling looking-glass like the one hung in the Evil Queen’s castle, Disney could hardly have seen coming.
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In 2023, Zegler was further attacked for appearing to criticise the 1937 Snow White, which she labelled “extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for” in an interview at Disney’s D23 convention. The original film was, by today’s standards of consent, a “love story with a guy who literally stalks her,” she explained. The upcoming modern rework of the tale, the actress announced, would feature a more empowered princess, who’s “not going to be saved by the prince”.
Flash-forward to this year, when after a pair of disastrous trailers in 2024 were met with over one million dislikes each on YouTube, Disney is now incorporating footage from the original Snow White in their newest ads: