Snow White promotional poster from The Walt Disney Studios.
The new Snow White movie was released on March 21, 2025 and the movie had great potential. The Snow White live-action movie was supposed to be released on March 22, 2024 but was delayed due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. Many people consider the movie a ‘flop’. What caused the live action movie to be such a failure, and why was it so controversial?
Unfortunately, many people are angry about the casting of Rachel Zegler due to her Latina roots and the fact that she doesn’t fit the description of “skin as white as snow”. Zegler stated on many occasions that the original Snow White was too focused on Snow White’s “weird” love story. She received intense criticism “that not all female characters have to be ‘girl bosses’.”
The movie also received backlash for the fake dwarves. Fans were taken aback when they realized that the seven dwarves weren’t actual actors, but rather computer generated. Many little actors who would have been ecstatic to land a role in Snow White were more than disappointed. Disney responded to the outrage by arguing that they were trying to avoid reinforcing past stereotypes that were created by the original Snow White.
There were many political conflicts that clashed with the movie as well. Gal Gadot (the actor who played the Evil Queen) is widely known as Israeli, and Zegler is very open about her pro-Palestine beliefs. In many posts, Zegler adds final notes on her urgency to “free Palestine.” Gadot also is highly active in the world of pro-Israel politics. She spoke at a Anti-Defamation League summit and the words “condemning Hamas” and “massacre of Jews” were used. This caused even more hatred towards the film due to the forcefully expressed political beliefs.
After the 2024 Presidential election, Zegler made a heated Instagram post, expressing her overwhelming emotions. “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace,” Zegler said. Megyn Kelly, an American journalist who is active in politics, created more disturbance around the film by giving backlash to Zegler’s post. Jonah Platt, the son of the director, publicly reprimanded Zegler for being childish, and blamed her for the low numbers from the box office.
It is safe to say that the live-action Snow White’s box office flop wasn’t caused by a single mistake. Since the disastrous release of the movie, Disney has announced that they are going to halt production of all new live action movies. Hopefully, future live action movies will avoid the restless drama of politics, and won’t take away from the original magic of the Disney films.