The fairy tale is over: why "Snow White" failed before the start of the rental

A week after its worldwide release, the infamous "Snow White" reached domestic cinemas. The studio even arranged the American premiere for the remake of the classic Disney animation without the red carpet — the film began to fail long before the release. As a result, by now his fees amount to less than $150 million with a budget of $ 250 million, this is one of the most high-profile disasters of Disney film production in recent years. Izvestia has seen the picture and explains why things are going so badly for her.

How "Snow White" was filmed

Homer came up with many epithets for Odysseus, one of them is "long—suffering." If the Greek poet had had a chance to follow the fate of Disney's "Snow White," he would surely have agreed that such a definition would also be quite suitable for her.

To begin with, the studio's first plans to make a game remake of its first full-length cartoon date back to 2012. And they were thwarted because "Snow White: Revenge of the Dwarfs" and "Snow White and the Huntsman" were released almost simultaneously, and both became hits. As a result, the first game remake of the animated classic was Cinderella, which earned more than half a billion dollars in 2015 and inspired the company to create the next "reboots." In 2016, "Snow White" was officially announced, and the long and difficult process of writing the script began. The text did not suit the studio for a long time, all new stars were invited to work, up to Greta Gerwig.

But the main challenges were ahead. In 2021, the dark-skinned Rachel Zegler, who has Colombian blood combined with Polish, was approved for the role of Snow White. When she played in Spielberg's "West Side Story," everyone was thrilled, but Snow White? Why isn't her skin white? Why is black playing the hunter? Why was the evil queen given to the Israeli Gal Gadot? Emotions raged around every Disney decision on the ensemble cast. To top it all off, Peter Dinklage, the star of Game of Thrones, was outraged that Disney had decided to invite real dwarf artists to play the dwarfs. The studio got scared and said it would make these characters entirely computer—generated, although the real dwarfs later complained that they were left without the opportunity to make money in this picture, and Dinklage was not authorized by anyone on behalf of the community to speak.

Most likely, Disney regretted approving such a casting more than once. Because there were more and more problems because of this. Zegler publicly criticized the original cartoon from the standpoint of feminism — and antagonized those who grew up with it. Then the filming began, during which Zegler publicly supported the Palestinians, and Gal Gadot supported Israel. Gadot began receiving threats, and Disney increased her security at the site. Then there was a strike by the actors and producers guilds, the film was not released in the spring of 2024 and was postponed to 2025, but if the studio management had known what would happen next, the film would have been better released without a premiere at all. Because in the fall of 2024, after Donald Trump's election victory, Zegler wrote "Fuck Donald Trump" on her social media page.

Disney, of course, forced the actress to make a public apology, but this hardly made the Republican part of the audience wait for the premiere any longer. Finally, by March 2025, critics had seen what Disney had done, and they had blown one of the most expensive films in the studio's history to smithereens. The scandals of all these years could not but play a role here, but there is an opinion that the subsequent commercial failure (less than $ 150 million in worldwide box office fees with production costs of more than $ 250 million) is due to the simple fact that the audience simply did not like the musical. And politics has nothing to do with it, although in a number of Arab countries radical anti-Semites called for a boycott of the release just because of Gal Gadot's participation in the film.

Why "Snow White" failed

The main problem of the film is, of course, in the script. The one that had been written and corresponded for so many years that it looked like a letter to Uncle Fyodor's parents from Prostokvashino. Because (almost) everything else is done very efficiently. The computer gnomes turned out to be so vivid that you can only rejoice at this decision: after all, they are fairy-tale characters, and they should look like this in order to be on a par with the cartoon-eyed squirrels and hares. The scenery looks great: a royal palace, a dungeon, a city, a magical forest, a hut, and especially a cave where dwarves have been mining jewelry for centuries. The inventive musical numbers look both respectful of the classic cartoon and the old Hollywood musical in general, but also add several fresh tracks, including the song of the evil sorceress. The eye is happy, the ear is happy, but the film turned out to be bad.

Because you need to understand what you're doing and why every time. Take for example the first remake of Disney cartoons, Cinderella. Why is this a wonderful picture that generations of viewers will be watching for a long time? Because there the story was focused on the confrontation of smart and interesting women. The ironic (and self-mocking) intellectual Lily James was made Cinderella, and at that time she was already working on "War and Peace", where she was Natasha Rostova, and the postmodern action comedy "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" based on Jane Austen. Therefore, Cinderella has, if I may say so, great literature and thought in her eyes, she is clearly above the position that was prepared for her — by whom? A stepmother performed by the great Cate Blanchett, a great dramatic actress who plays an intelligent, interesting woman, not at all a vulgar habalka. This conflict generates changes in plot details and gives rise to a new meaning, and in this tale the ratio of "lies" and "hints" is brought to perfection.

"Maleficent" and "Dumbo" are an attempt to tell a completely different story about the same characters. This was not always understood by the public, but the approach turned out to be interesting. "The Lion King", "The Jungle Book", "Aladdin", "The Little Mermaid" are an audiovisual feast, a celebration of technology, an attraction on the screen that adds little to classic plots, but this is just the kind of show worth going to the cinema for, because you won't see it properly at home.

In the case of "Snow White," the goals and objectives of the authors are unclear. Did they decide to make the heroine as strong and determined as most of the recent Disney princesses? But Rachel Zegler is trapped, because the heroine is not interesting at all! We see a schematic image of a girl who was raised well by wise parents, and then they died, but the daughter remained faithful to their precepts. And so, we are told how she grew up, mostly far from the people, and then, when she found out that the people were in trouble, she offered her stepmother to bake apple pies and go comfort the poor. The viewer in this place reacts in much the same way as the witch. And then Snow White meets the local robin hood Johnathan instead of the Prince, but they have nothing to do with each other, because he also has nothing but the memory of what was somehow right before, under the king, there is nothing inside. Two empty characters who can run, jump, sing, fight, kiss together — but they have nothing to talk about with each other. We only understand that Snow White is perhaps stronger and more consistent than the young man.

Poor Gal Gadot spends all her outstanding acting skills on two scenes — seducing the king at the beginning of the film and dressing up as an old woman who looks like Emperor Palpatine, closer to the finale. The rest of the time, she utters complete platitudes and talks to the light-my-mirror, but the character was not prescribed any reflection, no internal struggle, no goal. The sorceress is so unicellular that it is impossible to look at her for a long time, the authors did not even try to understand, for example, why she is so obsessed with being ruddier and whiter than everyone, or why she needs power and money when she does not even buy cosmetics for herself.

It's the same with everything else. A hunter walks in the frame, and he has nothing to do. The dwarves walk monotonously and pedantically to the caves and back. Funny guys in the forest are robbing someone and giving something to someone, but it's not prescribed either. The Disney scriptwriters wanted the conciseness of the Grimm fairy tales to remain, and for everything to look modern and relevant, but in the end they lost both.

The only living moment in the film is when Snow White, like Napoleon, discovers that she knows the name of each of her subjects, begins to communicate with them, but it seems like an epiphany, because throughout the film the heroine behaves completely somnambulistically, not understanding at all what is happening to her, her stepmother, the country and the people.. Where did the memory suddenly come from? Probably from a highwayman's kiss.

Yes, and she was named Snow White because there was a snowstorm when she was born. And that's how it is in this movie. Seven screenwriters have a child without meaning, and the audience today is not so stupid as not to notice this. As proved by a resounding failure.