How do you remake a remake like "Snow White" before it's even been remade? Ask the super-geniuses in charge at Disney these days, because their nine-figure reboot of the 1937 classic just got another nine figures tacked on to the production cost — and a one-year delay arriving at your local multiplex.
It seems that Disney has finally read the room and decided to ditch some of the worst elements of the movie that leaked earlier this year.
Originally titled "So Not White, One Dwarf, and the Six Painfully Intersectional Magical Fairyland Hipsters," [Editor's note: it was not originally titled that at all.] the reboot has been plagued with bad press starting more than a year before the original March 2024 release date. The trouble began with title star Rachel Zegler, who has no business in Snow business — even if she did physically resemble the fair maiden with "Lips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as snow."
Zegler annoyed fans by telling Variety last year that she "hated" the original and compared Prince Charming to a stalker. "I just mean that it's no longer 1937. She's not going to be saved by the prince and she's not going to be dreaming about true love."
(In case you were wondering which villain finally managed to kill a Disney princess, it was Disney.)
So Disney is keeping Zegler but ditching the human dwarf and the six painfully intersectional magical fairyland hipsters in favor of seven CGI dwarves.
What this means in practical terms is two things, aside from the one-year delay. The first is a whole lot of additional reshoots for a picture that already endured multiple budget-busting reshoots. The second is that Disney will have the jillion-dollar CGI render farms working 24/7 to insert multiple dwarves into most of the movie. "Sorry, bro, did you need those servers for your movie? We're still working on the one that was supposed to wrap last year."
Here are the original non-dwarf supporting characters, who appear to be garbed in costumes rejected by the Lyndhurst, N.J., Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament restaurant.
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 14, 2023
Whatever Disney is paying for all that new CGI, you can't help but think it's got to be better than that.
Reportedly, "Snow White" has already cost $330 million to produce, making it one of the top-ten most expensive movies ever made. Bumping that up to $400 million would put it in fourth place, behind two Star Wars sequels and a Jurassic World flick. All to reproduce, probably not well, an 83-minute animated feature that cost $32 million to make in today's dollars.
Conceptually, the whole thing is arguably a bigger mess than before today's news. With seven CGI dwarves, "Snow White" is practically now a Pixar film with some live-action elements — kinda robs "live-action" of most of its meaning.
Earlier this month, I suggested that there was no saving this Snow White, that Disney management should just "cancel the production, strike the sets, blacklist everyone involved, and take the L." Instead, they're going to throw another hundred million dollars (that's my back-of-the-envelope guesstimate) at a production that's had the stink of failure surrounding it since almost Day One.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the reshoots will remove all the Woke elements. Maybe the CGI dwarves will recreate some of the magic of the original. Maybe Zegler's publicist and/or Disney management will script her future public appearances and make her likable again.
But I still get the feeling that Disney really ought to just give this reboot the boot.
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