Last year, Disney released a live-action version of the beloved animated fairytale film “Snow White,” helmed by Marc Webb (“The Amazing Spider-Man,” “500 Days of Summer”), which didn’t exactly fare well with critics or audiences. Despite the film making $205.6 million at the box office, it wasn’t enough to push the movie into the profit range.
In a new report from Forbes, new company filings have revealed that “Snow White” (starring Rachel Zegler as the iconic Disney princess and Gal Gadot as villainess the Evil Queen) ended up losing them a hefty $170 million, on a budget of $336.5 million (costs ballooning likely due to Disney replacing actors playing the Seven Dwarves with creepy looking CGI versions).
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There had been a vocal minority online upset that a Latina actress was portraying Snow White (based on the classic Italian fairytale). It remains to be seen if that ultimately had an impact on audiences or not, given that the reception to the film itself was more than just underwhelming, and poor reviews didn’t feel influenced by a manufactured “controversy” but more by the execution/quality.
The duality here is that while “Snow White” was a massive misfire for Disney, their other 2025 effort, “Lilo & Stitch” (another live-action remake based on a Disney animated pic), ended up as one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, earning over a billion dollars at the global box office. It ended up among the Top 5 movies (three of which were released by the Mouse House) of 2025 behind “Ne Zha 2,” “Zooptopia 2,” and “Avatar: Fire & Ash.”
Perhaps the way to go moving forward is to focus on remaking more contemporary animation projects, as “Lilo & Stitch” already has a sequel in the works. Considering that their demographic is getting increasingly younger, trying to remake movies nearly 100 years old might not have the same level of nostalgia or connection to young moviegoers needed to convert into ticket sales. Which could explain Disney’s push to turn “Tangled” (directed by Michael Gracey with a cast featuring Teagan Croft, Milo Manheim, and Kathryn Hahn in lead roles) and “Hercules” (produced by The Russo Brothers) into live-action features, both based on more recent Disney flicks in comparison to something like “Snow White.”
We have to imagine that eventually Disney will look at giving the period body-swapping pic “The Emperor’s New Groove” (where a young Emperor is transformed into a llama), and the action-adventure film “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” a similar live-action remake treatment, although this is more of an assumption, as their future options for source matieral might become limited.
Even with “Snow White” losing the studio money, it doesn’t feel like they’ll be slowing down their live-action remakes anytime soon.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
