Disney’s long national nightmare is finally nearing an end. The media and entertainment conglomerate knows just how bad things are for its “Snow White” live-action remake, and it’s really, really bad.
There has been a tremendous amount of negative press and attention on “Snow White” over the past few years, thanks to star Rachel Zegler’s disdain for the original material, divisive political opinions, and the leak of atrocious on-set photos.
After all that build-up, Disney’s one hope was that reviews would be overwhelmingly positive, giving audiences a reason to set aside pre-release perception. That also didn’t go as planned, with movie reviewers on both sides of the political aisle hammering the film as a bland, boring, legacy-destroying waste of time.
READ: Reviews For Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Remake Are In, And They’re Terrible
Still, initial tracking estimates from box office sites suggested that “Snow White” could make up to $70 million in its opening weekend. That wasn’t going to help Disney turn a profit on its $270 million movie. Then tracking was revised down to an estimated $55 million opening weekend, setting off warning bells.
Well, the actual results are in, and it’s even worse than those lowered expectations.
‘Snow White’ Provides Another Valuable Lesson For Disney
On Friday night, theaters across America had plenty of available seats for “Snow White.”
READ: Colossal Collapse: Snow White Opens to Photos of MASSIVE Empty Seats Across America
And per Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, initial opening weekend estimates are now as low as $45 million. That’s about the same as Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” remake, which released in 2019. That film was considered a box-office flop, even with a significantly lower budget. And the financial picture gets even worse after adjusting for inflation. Even though 2019 was just six years ago, the “Dumbo” opening weekend in 2025 dollars is roughly $52 million.
So the initial box office gross for “Snow White” is more than 13% lower than “Dumbo,” which was a massive flop. Not good. Not good at all.
And given audience reactions, it’s not likely to help Disney by sticking around in theaters. The CinemaScore, a composite rating given by viewers after seeing the movie, was a B+. Keep in mind that nearly every previous Disney live-action remake had been in the “A” range. So it’s failing financially, critically, and with audiences. A rare trifecta.
Compared to the gross for other Disney live-action remakes, it fares even worse. “Maleficent,” starring Angelina Jolie, debuted to an inflation-adjusted $93.4 million in 2014. “Snow White” will make less than half that.
“Beauty and the Beast” opened to nearly $229 million, after adjusting for inflation. “Snow White” is making less than a fifth of that in its first weekend. “The Lion King” made an inflation-adjusted $240 million in its first three days. “Snow White” is going to make just 18% of that film’s opening gross.
There’s no two ways about it. Given the budget and marketing costs, Disney is going to lose a fortune. Hundreds of millions of dollars potentially.
If Disney executives were smart, they’d learn some very valuable lessons from this latest disaster. Stop trying to make every remake for “modern audiences,” because that “modern audience” is a progressive, woke archetype that represents a vanishingly small percentage of the American public. Stop hiring actors and actresses that hate the material they’re working on because of their obsession with left-wing politics. Stop spitting on what made you the dominant family entertainment company.
It sounds simple enough, right? For outside observers not consumed with using their progressive ideology to relentlessly patting themselves on the back for how good of a person they are, it is. For Disney? Who knows.
