Is the new Snow White a bomb? Probably not.
This piece first appeared on my newsletter, Future Proof. If you want takes like these (equivocal, yet hot) then please subscribe there. I’m also on Bluesky, if you feel the need to argue about childrens’ movies.
Regular readers of my newsletter will know how obsessed I am by Box Office receipts. It is because, in short, I think that cinema is on a trajectory towards i) massively reduced amounts of theatrical distribution, and ii) a grotesque homogenising of content around blockbuster blancmange.
An addition to the grand blancmange, this week, was Disney’s live action version of Snow White, directed by Marc Webb (who did a couple of Spiderman movies, back when that IP was still being released by Sony). The film is the latest part of Disney’s attempt to reissue its back catalogue of Golden Age(s) animations (this time the pre-war Golden Age, rather than the 1990s Golden Age, for avoidance of doubt) as live-action movies. It has been heralded, since its announcement, as a disaster. There are two big problems that have led to the project being decried as “woke”.
The first was criticism of the seven dwarfs from actor Peter Dinklage. Dinklage’s feedback was, essentially, that many of our social stereotypes about dwarfism were entrenched in the 1930s by the presentation in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and that these have been harmful to the community. A fair critique and one that he is eminently entitled to make. Disney then, with a lack of PR soft touch, announced that they wouldn’t hire actors with dwarfism for the roles and would instead create the characters using CGI (and not refer to them as “dwarfs” in the film). Creatively, this was kind of a non-event, but it set in motion a narrative that Disney (who were at the time facing a lot of pressure in Florida over the “don’t say gay” bill) were making a “woke” Snow White.
Then there was the casting of Rachel Zegler — an American actress whose mother is of Colombian descent — in the title role, and Israeli actress Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen. There was the internet’s, now customary, racist attacks on Zegler, which should be criticised by compartmentalised for the purposes of this analysis. More profound was Zegler’s outspoken centre-left views, such as supporting Kamala Harris, which irked a lot of grown-men who were unlikely to watch the film anyway. More strikingly, her pro-Palestinian perspective brought her into direct tabloid friction with her co-star Gadot, who has been equally outspoken in support of Israel (she previously served in the IDF). Given that it was already being decried as “woke Snow White” in some quarters, this only entrenched that narrative. (Disney cast Zegler and Gadot in autumn 2021, two years before Hamas’s attack on Israel — principle photography began in March 2022 and concluded by summer 2023, so there was no on-set overlap with the current conflict in Gaza).
Bla bla bla: what matters now is if Snow White is going to be punished by cinema goers for all this in-fighting. The right-wing press have lambasted the film’s opening — Woke Snow White Bombs In Disastrous Opening Weekend — seeing it as confirmation of their agenda that supposed “wokeness” is anathema to good B.O. performance. But does this claim stack up? According to business bible Forbes, the answer is yes. Snow White, they say, is one of Disney’s weakest performing live-action films, after its opening weekend. I might be minded to trust Forbes, but for the sake of my own sanity, I want to have my own look at the figures.
Snow White did $42,206,415 of US business over a 3-day weekend. Their most recent live action remake, Mufasa, did $35,409,365 over the same 3-day weekend. Is that just a case of the IP being less familiar to audiences? Is this Disney fatigue in play? Or is this evidence of Disney’s “wokeness” being overstated? Let’s look at other opening weekends for live-action remakes, in reverse chronological order since Snow White and Mufasa, back to the start of the covid-19 pandemic (before which the world of cinema was a very different place…).
The Little Mermaid (2023): $95,578,040
Peter Pan & Wendy (2023): No Box Office, straight to streaming.
Pinocchio (2022): No Box Office, straight to streaming.
Cruella (2021): $21,496,997
Mulan (2020): No Box Office, straight to streaming.
Now, I don’t want to be a dick to the good people of Forbes, but I think that their analysis of Snow White’s performance is based on some faulty assumptions. I include their list below, complete with my comic sans annotation of the year of release (red = pre-covid, blue = post-pandemic).
So, what are the issues? Firstly, they included Snow White and the Huntsman, which was a Universal film, not a Disney one (utilising public domain IP). This rocked my confidence in their list-making ability.
Secondly, they include all of these pre-pandemic Box Office receipts without acknowledgement of the extent to which headline figures have changed since then. Sure, Disney films have now bounced back to nine-figure grosses, but the market is significantly different, with fewer screens and a general malaise. The Lion King remake in 2019, for example, opened across 4,802 domestic theaters; Snow White opened in
4,200. That’s a 12.5% decline, in raw theater numbers, in five years — and surviving theaters are running fewer performances, on fewer screens. I think there has to be some credit given to post-pandemic films for surviving in the new normal.
And, thirdly, they don’t bother to include the films that went straight to streaming. I can see why this is tempting, when you are analysing Box Office receipts. A film like Mulan was always designed for theatrical release, but impacted by the covid pandemic. Cruella is omitted despite doing fairly serious business, presumably under the same pandemic criteria. But Pinocchio and Peter Pan & Wendy both demonstrate a recent change in tack for Disney, as it pumps money into its streaming service, Disney+. Both are big films with top tier directors (Robert Zemeckis and David Lowery, respectively) and A-list stars (Tom Hanks, Jude Law etc). The fact that they went straight to streaming is evidence of a change of strategy from Disney, and one that ought to be taken into account when looking at theatrical grosses.
It’s clear that the House of Mouse increasingly sees a theatrical run as a marketing tool designed to sell Disney+ subscriptions. A film like Mufasa will not be written off by Disney high-ups simply because it had a limited opening weekend (not to mention that it went on to do $719.5 million in worldwide business). A theatrical run raises the profile of the project, guarantees the stars will get booked into big interview slots, and means that, when it comes, a month or two later, to Disney+, customers feel like they’re being treated. Somehow it feels more special when a theatrically-released film quickly appears on streaming, than it would if the same film has just showed up straight on the platform. A theatrical run is the best marketing campaign any streaming film can have — it’s just also a very expensive one.
I think the question of whether Snow White is bombing is quite fraught, but my answer is “probably not”. Ticket sales are fine for a slow part of the year and given the very middling reviews. It is already showing signs of doing well internationally, and hasn’t opened in all markets. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up with half a billion dollars in worldwide box office receipts, plus a big, strong run on Disney+. And that would represent a pretty good return for the monolithic media corporation.
Far from being evidence that audiences are out to punish “woke” projects, Snow White indicates they don’t really care about that sort of thing. More important is a sense of whether the film is good or not. The most analogous project is the 2023 remake of Little Mermaid (which has the advantage of being based on an animation from 1989, so in the childhood of most of Gen Z’s parents, rather than 1937). That film significantly outperformed Snow White’s opening weekend box office, despite being plagued by the same accusations of “wokeness” and casual racism surrounding its casting of a non-white lead. So why did it do so well?
Perhaps the reason lies in it being… a better film? Rotten Tomatoes says that it received 67% critical approval compared to Snow White’s 42%, and 94% audience approval compared to 74% for Snow White.
Sometimes the culture wars make people overthink very simple stuff.
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