Hollywood's latest attempt to "modernize" a beloved classic has crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. Disney's woke reimagining of “Snow White,” carrying a staggering $270 million price tag, is now estimated to bring in a mere $45 million on its opening weekend—numbers that would make all seven dwarfs Grumpy. The big question is whether Disney will learn from its mistake, or keep burning money on woke garbage no one wants to see.
The writing was on the wall from the moment lead actress Rachel Zegler, a Latina actress, was cast as Snow White, but it got even worse as she began expressing her contempt for the source material that made Disney a household name. Rather than honoring the magical story that captivated generations, Disney opted for a "modern" interpretation that nobody asked for and even fewer wanted to see.
And based on social media reports, almost nobody went to see it.
Let's put this catastrophic opening in perspective. When adjusted for inflation, Snow White's debut performed 13% worse than 2019's “Dumbo” – a film universally acknowledged as a massive flop. For further context, previous Disney remakes such as “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” opened to $229 million and $240 million, respectively (adjusted for inflation). “Snow White” managed to earn just 18% of “The Lion King”'s opening weekend.
Related: Here’s Why Peter Dinklage Is Wrong About the 'Snow White' Remake
Even more telling are the reviews. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the flick has a 21% score from viewers, which is worse than “Howard the Duck.” Critics, who usually trip over themselves to praise anything sufficiently progressive, gave the film a pitiful 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When you've lost both the audience and the typically woke critics, you know you've created something spectacularly bad.
This debacle represents everything wrong with modern Hollywood: astronomical budgets paired with minimal creative vision, all in service of appeasing a progressive minority while alienating the broader audience. The empty theater seats across America on opening weekend tell the real story—families aren't interested in having their beloved fairy tales transformed into leftist lectures.
Will Disney learn from this costly mistake? If recent history is any indication, probably not. I still can’t get over how the live-action “Lady and the Tramp” reimagined the couple who adopts Lady as interracial—despite being set in 1909 in a Midwestern town inspired by Walt Disney’s hometown of Marceline, Missouri, where interracial marriage was illegal at the time.
This is a perfect example of how blind Disney has become in its relentless push to modernize classic stories. In trying to be “inclusive,” they ended up whitewashing anti-miscegenation laws. Isn’t that more problematic than a lack of diversity in a period film—even in one where dogs can talk?
Traditional Disney magic didn't need updating—it needed preserving. Until Disney (and Hollywood as a whole) figures that out, expect more empty theaters and red ink in their future. But hey, at least they can console themselves with those glowing tweets from their handful of remaining defenders while their shareholders watch another fortune disappear into the wishing well of woke capitalism.
