I just read this Variety hit job in which it's clear that Disney is trying to pin the failure of Snow White on Rachel Zegler. I'm confused: Did she make the studio spend $270 million on an unasked-for remake of a 90-year-old piece of IP?
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I feel the same way about Rachel Zegler. I honestly think they’re both reallllly boring actresses, but at least Rachel can sing, she definitely earned her part.
saw a comment saying gal gadot is just a propaganda doll sponsored by AIPAC and the zionist crowd, i mean they bought her a hollywood star recently for giving us nothing 😭
This campaign--and it is clearly a campaign--is now continuing in The Hollywood Reporter (see their homepage). It is very clearly an attempt to blame the movie's failure on her expressed politics. It's astonishingly graceless, and it's not honest.
The weird thing is that this strategy seems to come from an alternate universe where people are deeply familiar with Zegler's politics when in reality most people don't even know here name.
"THR," when it put Cheryl Hines -- who is married to that disgraceful lunatic Kennedy, now part of trump's cabal -- lost a lot of credibility. Not surprising it's picking on Zegler now. Really not cool.
Is this gonna end up as one of those things where in 6 months we find out it actually made 800 million dollars? Cause I feel like we do this with everyone one of these.
It's not looking likely - the Little Mermaid remake had a way bigger opening weekend (it was Memorial Day) and hung on a while, but in less than 2 weeks the Minecraft movie will suck all the air out of the room for family titles. But also, Disney was way more aggressive promoting TLM to start.
Reminds me of producers blaming Margaret Lockwood for box office failure of Cast a Dark Shadow and ruining her film career. (She's fantastic in it, too.) I'm still pissed about it.
Hollywood, worried about being too associated with the left, is starting an anti-woke campaign to mollify media people who think that Trump's election changed everything. It won't solve Hollywood's real problems and probably won't even give us any tolerable movies, but it's all they know how to do.
If pro-Palestine Rachel is not white enough to be snow white then also no magic mirror in any universe will declare Gal Gadot to be fairest among even few. She is not pretty. But of course Israeli lobby is too powerful to blame Gal Gadot as well.
Not to mention the fact that even the bad reviews say that she is by far the best thing in it and carries the whole movie by herself. The Hollywood knives are just out for her — and like the AMPAS non-support of Ballal — for anyone they think is on “the wrong side.”
I completely agree. As I said above re: Variety's hit piece, Disney is the driving force behind killing the 'woke' Snow White in service to Trumpism. I saw it. I liked it. @jameshibberd.bsky.social has a job in service to the Industry. Rachel Zegler shouldn't be the target here, however. Also:
Trump just signed an executive order that could block millions from voting. It’s unconstitutional, dangerous, and a power grab disguised as 'election integrity.' Here’s why this move threatens our democracy—and why we must act now to stop it
Oh sorry they’re going after the one who isn’t the terrible actress instead of the one who can’t act her way out of a paper bag . I was distracted by final jeopardy/ the effects of a kitten who decided that 3am was the time to figure out how to drink from my water glass.
Disney has killed Star Wars, marvel, neglected Pixar, and drowned the market in these soulless live action adaptations but sure blame the actress. It must be hard to face the fact you’ve destroyed every bit of IP in 10 years.
Funny, but considering the damage he did with his article all but claiming former President Biden had dementia, I don't see Variety or THR singling him out.
Good point. What happened to that? Clooney, I'm sorry to write, just strikes me as a phony. He talks a good game, but hasn't said that much about trump lately and could easily flee the country if democracy falls here.
Apparently it's been bogged down by legal threats. Under the current regime I don't think there's any chance at all of seeing it, assuming it was ever real.
I mean, he was fucking right about that, so not sure what the issue is. The “damage” was from Biden and his team hiding the decline instead of announcing in January 2023 that he was not running again.
Meanwhile, we now have a traitor, who clearly is declining on a daily basis, infesting the White House and plans to sell this nation out to our adversaries. But sure, complain about Biden.
Two things can be bad at once. I’m just pointing out that Biden needed to be forced out and if he’d quit sooner and not forced Kamlaa to have “no daylight” between her and his policies she might have had a better shot. Attacking Clooney for being 100% correct is weird.
The treatment Rachel has faced in the media is honestly disgusting. I even spoke to a colleague at work yesterday who said she ‘ruined’ the Disney Princess vibe with her feminism. And it’s so baffling, especially since her performance is magnificent and absolutely carries the film!
Ultimately, it’ll renew interest in the original, sell a bunch of merch, get a lot of views on Disney+, and basically act as marketing and branding and make its money back. But it was fundamentally a pointless exercise, overworked to please no one.
It was great. I don't know the actress who played Snow White from a bump in the road, but her pipes absolutely blew me away. LOVED all the dwarves characters.
The CGI looked fucking disgusting and the film reeks, just absolutely stinks of cynical money-grab. I'm sure everyone involved tried but as you said: nobody asked for this. Hate to say this but I think Nostalgia is officially over
Her pro-Palestine stance makes her an easy target... but everything I've heard about the movie is that Zegler is the ONLY redeeming part of that movie.
You've heard correct. Picked my offspring up from their 2nd viewing of it about 2 hours ago. The 4 elderly women in the theater with them tonight LOVED it. My younglings found it worth paying to see twice (so far).
Well, I mean, the Agenda here was painting Zegler as the difficult villain for years. She very publicly does not align with many of the people who decided to make this movie, so I think they're crashing it to condemn her. Hopefully, people know better. Skip this film but support Rachel Zegler!
I took my kids expecting to just grin and bear it and… was mildly surprised that it wasn’t bad. Don’t really care for Gadot’s performance but RZ was good.
A lot of critics thought that Rachel Zegler was the best thing about the movie. I saw the movies with my daughters and I thought that she and Gal Gadot were pretty good in a movie that didn’t add much to the original.
Absolutely no one wanted this film. Bald-faced money grab. I feel bad for RZ. She’s getting way too much hate for one ill-advised remark. And she was just being honest with her feelings anyway. Shame on Disney for spitting on Walt’s memory.
Yeah I know all about his dark side. But SW is a genuine groundbreaking work of art. There is no reason on earth to remake it. I’m glad all these things bomb. Come up with something original for gods sake.
Agreed. Feels very Occam's Razor-y that eventually, audiences are going to lose patience with remakes that have very little raison d'etre except "hey, it's a safe bet."
He complained about casting little people, IIRC, because relegating little people to roles as dwarfs and leprechauns and oompa loompas is one of his big pet peeves. They had the option to cast it like Lord of the Rings.
Looking back that would have been the No-Brainer of No-Brainers…
But Disney’s easily bruised corporate ego was still smarting from the fan blowup over the early “Seven Diverse Individuals of Normal Height” set photos, they overreacted and said “The fans want it to look EXACTLY LIKE the original! 😱”
Ironicly, they used a bunch of average short guys to play the seven little men in the Disney series Once Upon a Time and no one blinked an eye. They could have done that again, but...oh well.
FWIW: I saw the movie last week. While hardly a classic, it was entertaining -- and Zegler did well in it ((what a voice, by the way). I know Gadot's performance has been mocked, but generally she held her own, too.
I saw that article, and didn't want to click on it. I suspect she's being singled out because of her outspoken support of Palestinians (and might be wrong here, but I've never seen or heard her make any anti-Semitic comments, which would be disgusting).
She was also outspoken about how this wasn’t going to be a love story where a princess is saved by a prince… Which is basically the entire premise of the original story.
I don’t think most people were aware of her pro-Palestine stance. And most people I know would support her for that.
Correct; Zegler hasn't been shy about that (and again, I've heard or seen nothing anti-Semitic from her.) For the record: The people of Gaza and Israel deserve so much better than the corrupt butchers leading their governments.
Tangential, but I will go to my grave chuckling about Disney accidentally making a live-action remake of SNOW WHITE in which an Israeli Snow Queen persecutes a brown Snow White.
There were every 30 second/15 second camera framing change ups for what felt like the first 20 minutes. The AI is so bad they don’t want you to look too long at it.
Fact. And also seriously all Disney needs to do with these remakes is use the Muppets instead. You redo Little Mermaid and have Miss Piggy as Ursula and you can print money YA HEAR ME DISNEY? UH YOURE WELCOME.
They need to just come out and admit they're only doing this to retain the copyright over the originals. Or at least that's what they think they're doing, even if that's not how the law actually works.
Otherwise they'd just cancel them and make more money on the tax breaks.
It's not like they gave it the big marketing push that Mufasa or Captain America 4 got. There's hardly any merchandise, especially compared to the Little Mermaid remake from '23, which they really pushed and, while again it was too pricey to be profitable, was their second biggest film that year.
Tatiana Siegel piece. Doubt The Mouse even had go ask, her job is redirecting YouTube ragebait goons' traffic to Variety with confirmation-bias articles. Real garbage.
Yet people are still going to see the movie and they'll probably leave it in theaters long enough for it to make a profit. Them tossing her under the bus is just gross, and I'm not gonna see the movie.
Oh yeah, a 110 lb woman twisted the arms of a billion$ industry to make her movie? Not freakin' likely Walt or uh, whoever!
Doesn't anybody respect free speech anymore. I mean sure she might be defending the Palestinians, but really who else is publicly? Aren't most public figures hiding these days?
Yes, this’s the second Gen-Z “Geez, the original movie’s 90 years old, what, did they carve it on a pyramid?” ageist-Millennial thread we’ve gotten today that thinks it was the source’s fault, and not Ziegler’s for being a mouthy narcissistic jackass.
The only thing Rachel Zegler is guilty of is picking the wrong roles. She seemingly keeps jumping from controversial film to controversial film and it sucks. She's an incredibly talented actress and singer, and I hope she can overcome this roadblock.
All of these live action remakes they're making these days are terminally redundant. Are they so out of ideas? They could convert another of their theme park attractions the way they did Pirates of the Caribbean instead. But that would require thought and creativity.
Maybe they should've have hired Miss IDF to play the Wicked Queen, during one of the most blatant genocides since the one that created the IDF in the first place ☕️🫖
I usually just copy the post, delete the original one, paste what was written in a new post/reply, and make the edits before hitting the "Reply" button.
I loved her in West Side Story, and I was looking forward to seeing her in this. But after hearing her trash the original classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, that was my personal reason for not wanting to see the remake.
Also I think that some studios might learn with examples like WHITE BIRD, BORDERLANDS, MICKEY 17 and now SNOW WHITE that, if you movie was supposed to be released two years ago and you keep pushing it, people might lose interest in it someday.
I do wonder if the film had been released last spring (along with ELIO) whether it would have done better. The big issue would have been that it would have been coming on the heels of the surprisingly similar flop WISH.
I hear Rachel is great in it. I don’t mind the live action remakes, I love Cinderella, but Rachel really turned me off during that tour with her attitude and also not having real dwarves in the film is a turnoff for me.
But yeah, not a fan of Rachel even if she’s good. 😊
why isn't the terrible decision to do those creepy fake dwarves drawing any blame in the media? As soon as I saw them in the ads, I knew this movie was a miss.
There are so many FAILS in this remake, where do I start? RZ should not take the fall, when she didn't write the script and acted the way they told her to. Yeah, she ran her mouth a lot, which didn't help PR. But she mostly just pointed out the writing on the wall for how much this film would stink.
And the same writer who did the hit pieces on Nia DaCosta and who claimed that Elon Musk intervened to prevent Amber Heard from being fired from Aquaman 2.
Tbc, I've only read reviews. But every single one seems to be almost a repeat: Zegler needs a chiropractor bc she carried this and made multiple trips, Gal Gadot's cardboard cutouts have given better performances, and the rough draft apparently got filmed by accident.
This was a studio SNAFU, plain and simple. Zegler understood the assignment and brought it. The rest of it seems to have languished on the vine like rotten fruit from a plant growing in zombie diarrhea.
Yes, but that literally describes all their live action remakes. In fact, the opposite of asking for these we've all been screaming for them to STOP making this garbage. Not that they listen.
Disney buried this one and is putting all their eggs in the Lilo + Stitch remake cart. Rachel's doing Evita on stage in a couple of months and will get her praise there.
Just talking with my daughter about this. Both of us Disney fans. There is no need for live action remakes. Just release the originals in theaters and you could make more money than these are making. They need to find new stories and new ways to tell them for today's audience!
It feels like despite Disney making its name on critically acclaimed animation, some of its execs seem to feel that animation doesn't have any merit as an artform. Which might be why they've killed hits like The Owl House and moved everything into live action remakes.
Disney had the talent, and the fans to keep it afloat for a lot time but they keep shooting themselves in the foot, and Paramount is doing the same thing (albeit it not pushing actresses to take the fall or the push towards live action remakes) but they quickly pushed ST:LD out of existence,
And that's not even going to how they hit the jackpot with Star Trek Prodigy, but are seemingly dead silent about if it'll be picked up again. I've saved a lot of stress not paying for either, but its sad that it's going this way.
I believe the spin is that her public comments turned people off of seeing the film at all, not that she was good in it.
A more plausible explanation is that the animated Snow White isn't very popular anymore, and there are already tons of live-action versions of the fairy tale. Nobody cares.
If Disney's trying to claim that her being Columbian and brown skinned put people off, may I just point out how stupid it is for anyone, even the whitest parents in the world, to name their fresh-from-the-womb newborn for the colour of her skin and expect her to stay that colour her whole life?
You've got this squishy potato that hasn't even touched daylight yet and is still developing melanin, doesn't matter how poetic you want to be, don't name the kid Snow White
In the latest movie, perhaps, but anyone who has actually read the fairytale knows that she was named after her skin being white as the freshly fallen snow. The mother even WISHES for her child to have that (how fucked up is that?).
"How I wish that I had a daughter who had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony." -the queen (not the "evil queen") after pricking her finger while sewing and dripping a few drops of blood onto some snow.
Sometimes a story with cartoonish characters needs to stay a cartoon. It's weird that putting in real actors sucked the life out of it, but that's what happened here.
I didn't sit through the whole movie because my daughter, who is usually obsessed with all things Disney was bored and wanted to leave. It just seemed kind of lifeless to me. It'll probably be ok as a home video.
It's funny, I didn't read it that way. Or rather I read it wrong. Like it's absolutely boilerplate Variety-type reporting. But every paragraph describing her actions and the consequences I read positively. Does Tatiana Siegel's Zionist hogwash hit piece work if you don't read it as it was intended?
They’re also wrong. “Kids today” largely don’t like the old classics. I tried to make my kids watch em, but my 26 year old animator kid doesn’t know Dumbo. They liked some remakes of classics but the younger kids are super niche. Snow White’s story has been flogged. Time fir original material!
I saw Dumbo once and Bambi and they traumatized me. But the art is incomparable & the music is special. Kids now have TV & games that were inconceivable in my day. It makes sense they are attracted to less depressing things. And they are very slow.
You’re not wrong. I think back then dark children’s stories were everything:Grimms, Hans C Anderson, Aesops; there’s always a price to pay ; morality tales. Always bullies, too.
Grandpa was so excited to share “The Never Ending Story” with his 9 year old grandson, who politely sat through it although he couldn’t get into it. I supplied ice cream but still owe him.
I didn’t dare try to show him my adored Love Bug, which I must have watched many times at his age. Finding out (recently) that Buddy Hackett had an impressive, beyond Pryor vocabulary was a surprise.
The key is to introduce them to those things before modern garbage. My kids (17-23) LOVE the classics- and everything mentioned in this comment exchange. They'll even watch old Astaire/Rogers movies with glee.
With politics aside, it's simply lazy film making. Studio thinks "We've already got the movie." No reason to try anything different with the characters. Just throw a lot of special effects on the screen and see what sticks. Casting seems secondary. Original ideas seem to be few and far between.
Lazy, bad leadership...yes. but will anyone besides a few moviegoers care about how badly Hollywood runs its business when they can always blame it on culture-war bullshit like "wokeness?" That's what comes of 40 years of insisting that all art is political.
I went to the movie with my daughter and loved it. A perfect recreation of the original, and the score was magnificent throughout. Will be watching again.
Actors always get blamed for a movie bombing, I remember the year they tryed to push Taylor Kitsh with three big movies n one year and they all bombed.
It’s a movie folks! It’s well made and was fun for my grandkids. I don’t see any young people complaining about it. Sometimes I have to just shake my head and wonder why so many people are so hard to please. What a relief to sit for two hours enjoying this not have to think about the orange idiot.
Yeah he’s absolutely right and they had him right there who can sing and is well known and loved actor as well as a few other little people actors who im sure at least some can also sing. Or have someone dub in for the singing. They only have one song right?
“Trashed the original” - she expressed the most boiler plate ‘girl power’ sentiment about updating a story from the 1800s via the 1930s, stop validating people’s bad faith ragebait, jeezus this sucks @variety.com
I think the problem with the remakes is they mostly are new stories inspired by the old ones. But people go in expecting a nostalgia hit, but it's so different it can feel a weird kind of uncanny valleyish.
You’re probably right. Since I haven’t seen any, I can’t confirm if that’s what happens. But it makes me think of the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Using new stories as the base is an attempt to make an old story relevant.
Why not come up with something entirely new instead?
But they are great basic stories and they’ve been around a long time, I’m really not against these live remakes. I don’t understand why people complain about them. If it’s cast well and entertaining, why not? Like I said another post, Cinderella was great. Loved it, one of my favorite movies.
Same. I think it can be really interesting to see the different directions they take with it. Like the live action Mulan is a completely different film and I loved it. And I've heard Snow White has more agency, and it isn't a Prince on a white horse that comes to her rescue.
My worry about the new Lilo and Stitch is that they're going to stay too close to the original. It's a tricky balance, but I feel like they do best when they feel new, not just reshot.
And people need to lighten tf up. There's soo many shit kids films out there. These are by no means the worst.
I’m reading a lot of people bitching about the live remakes. So I think there is a sentiment against them. But, yes, people really need to lighten up, and it all comes down to the quality the movie. Apparently this movie is not good.
I knew the minute I saw Gal Gadot as the queen it was gonna be a flop. She’s a terrible actress. Then there were the decisions about the seven dwarves. then…then…then…
If it's a failure it's intentional due to Disney's bad marketing and bad casting; Zegler is the best part of the movie, and can actually sing; casting/having Gal Gadot sing was a terrible decision. Overall, the movie was good BECAUSE of Zegler. My offspring (17-23) saw it twice this week.
Of all the “nah, I don’t need my back waxed” decisions ever made, this one apparently has been the most detrimental to shareholder value, which I believe merits Capital Punishment *or* a lunch with Leon Skum (as if there were a difference)
She did the best she could with the really bad content they provided her. Disney needs to stop making these horrible live action remakes and then shoving their lead actress out in front of them when they fail.
When Disney+ debuted and there was novelty around instant access to the ancient Disney catalog while we were trapped in our houses by Covid, we watched all the old movies with the kids. Exactly once. Have never watched any of them since. Can’t imagine ever watching them again.
I saw Lady and the Tramp for the first time and boy, howdy could they not screen that film today. The 1955 stereotypes were nuts and I remember the Dorito Bandito.
Which one? The original or the omg wtf is this live action nonsense? Cue beating-us-over-the-head-with-diversity-casting, but I found it completely jarring to have a mixed race couple in 1909 (against the law), and was tense the entire film waiting for them to be attacked by neighbors, lawmen, etc.
Was this an Iger project or a Chapek thing? The internet has been racistly mad about this move for half a decade at this point. I thought maybe it had just been killed, tbh.
Either way, it was dumb. There are easier ways to use this IP to keep the trademark active after it goes into the public domain. Just seemed like a movie nobody wanted, and the backlash had the “good fortune” of also becoming a right wing culture war story.
She might deserve a bit of it. Unlike the rest, she had the power to greenlight and/or shut down. But like the rest, she got fked by the edict from Iger/Chapek to pump out more hours of D+ content than it was possible to do at high level.
I keep thinking about how 'Spellbound' (where she voiced a new animated princess) should've been better/more recognized even for a SkyDance Entertainment film. It's 2 for 2 for most folks not giving a datn about its animated films.
Why do studios always want to find someone to blame for box office disappointment? Maybe the timing was wrong, tone was off, script shallow, directing average, the casting poor, and the acting boring. If it didn’t do well in the US they should determine why, learn from it, and move on.
I like Zegler. Was this all just a failure of media training? I thought on big movies everyone gets trained on dos and donts and talking points, etc. did they just not do that? Seems she was just out there shootin’ from the hip.
And they all needed serious training considering this movie was cursed the second Peter Dinklage dragged them for making a movie about magical dwarfs. Then they shot it using live non-dwarf actors, then changed it to all CG dwarf characters in post. It was an ill conceived cash grab from the jump.
100% agree. Story was always a white European love letter to itself, and should just be left that way. Whatever. Especially with other problematic story elements like historical treatment of dwarves, non-consensual kiss, etc. There are other great folk stories we could be telling. NEW stories!
This is the danger and stupidity of these anti woke folks, they provide cover for the Studios and Corporations who made these decision in the first place and they turn their hate on the artist / actress but NOT the companies. They're beggers of the Corporation.
Ah, I responded to your other comment before seeing this one. You can't understand that one side of a conflict being bad doesn't mean the other side can be too.
Yeeeaaah the fact they cast a former IDF soldier who promotes Zionism and the slaughter of Palestinian children with the acting skills of a cauliflower, that had NOTHING to do with it...
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(Taps penis absent-mindedly)
I have no idea about her or any of her beliefs
This thread was the first time I saw her name
All I knew was nothing about this movie looked the slightest bit new other than CGI dwarves
https://jasonegenberg.substack.com/p/the-executive-order-that-could-destroy
Fortunately, the current Administration is on this.
any time a woman has any power....... its unfair.
its wild.
https://youtu.be/_2yBrhUV3hM?si=PpVW7oWbbX1uV986
You got my interest.
Definitely 100% seeing it again.
And I’m still boycotting everything Gal Gadot after that stunt she pulled in lockdown ruining Imagine for me.
But there is zero chance I will sit through either those CGI dwarves or Gal Godot.
As Bill James once wrote, when you try to scapegoat someone, it's a sure sign that a scapegoat is needed.
Then winter came.
But Disney’s easily bruised corporate ego was still smarting from the fan blowup over the early “Seven Diverse Individuals of Normal Height” set photos, they overreacted and said “The fans want it to look EXACTLY LIKE the original! 😱”
No one batted an eye because, like the remakes, core Disney fans were busy gushing “Look, it’s my favorite! 😊”
I don’t think most people were aware of her pro-Palestine stance. And most people I know would support her for that.
Otherwise they'd just cancel them and make more money on the tax breaks.
https://deadline.com/2025/03/snow-white-box-office-blue-red-states-1236347329/
... holy shit, I can't even type that nonsense as sarcasm. These people are fucking deranged.
Doesn't anybody respect free speech anymore. I mean sure she might be defending the Palestinians, but really who else is publicly? Aren't most public figures hiding these days?
...a dildo
(Otherwise, they would have only spent $180M tops.)
….They just don’t get it. 🙄
1. Any more Batman or Batman-adjacent movies
2. Any more additions to ANY Spiderman franchise
3. Remakes of most of Disney's animated catalogue
It is a public domain story.
OH MY GOD
THANK YOU
HOW DO I FIX IT
But yeah, not a fan of Rachel even if she’s good. 😊
A more plausible explanation is that the animated Snow White isn't very popular anymore, and there are already tons of live-action versions of the fairy tale. Nobody cares.
There's also the white supremacy of it all where paleness is equated with beauty.
And we should take the learnings from there and use them to create something relevant for today.
Why not come up with something entirely new instead?
And people need to lighten tf up. There's soo many shit kids films out there. These are by no means the worst.
It’s really subjective but based on now these movies perform, we actually have the data to make these more informed and relevant.
And man, people really need to lighten up.
Thanks @durham4life.bsky.social
IMHO the original film was wonderful.
Will see again.
Damn that John Lasseter!
THIS.
no one asked for this slop.
its embarrassing they need to scapegoat it so so bad
Except "The 13th Warrior." "Eaters of the Dead" was drier than the Sahara in summer.
Gal Gadot: Israeli
Director Marc Webb: Male
Why is ANYONE surprised about who’s getting blamed?
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Snow-White-and-the-Seven-Dwarfs-4K-Blu-ray/335673/#Review
A cauliflower has more range.