'Snow White' Has an Unimpressive Debut

The new remake of the Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sold enough tickets to lead the box office race in its opening weekend, but its debut was not impressive, even on the relatively modest scale of Disney live-action remakes. Whether or not the movie can eventually turn on a profit on its quarter-billion-dollar production budget remains to be seen, but the prospect is not totally out of the question. Read on for details.

Via Variety.

“Snow White” may be the fairest of them all with a leading $43 million in its domestic box office debut, but Disney’s latest live-action remake is off to a sleepy start.

Overseas, “Snow White” also opened slightly behind projections with $44.3 million for a global launch of $87.3 million. Heading into the weekend, the film was estimated to collect $100 million globally.

“Snow White” arrived in theaters dogged with controversies, including criticism about the film’s depiction of the seven dwarves, complaints about changes to the nearly 100-year-old story and calls for boycotts because of co-stars Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot’s public stances on the Israel-Hamas war. There were also expensive reshoots, which added many millions to the film’s budget. Disney as a result scaled back the movie’s Los Angeles premiere, doing without traditional red carpet interviews. However, analysts don’t believe the deluge of bad publicity actually factored into ticket sales.

“This is a situation that is never ideal,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “In the case of ‘Snow White,’ kids and families likely just wanted to see a PG film and [were] perhaps unaware of the controversies.”

Still, this cinematic take on the 1937 animated classic has notched the lowest domestic debut to date for Disney’s various reimaginings, below even 2019’s “Dumbo” which took flight with $45 million (without adjusting for inflation).

Get the est of the story at Variety.