Art and Culture # 129: Snow White’s Disastrous Box Office Could Break Disney Forever
the Death of Disney as we know it!
What is more powerful than a bullet is art, and if a piece of art isn’t powerful, bullets supersede art. Because art, like firearms, are a fine art. Disney’s live action 2025 reiteration of Snow White opened with a horrible box office of $ 43 million dollars. “struggle to hit the $200 million mark. With $78 million domestically and another $90 million from overseas markets, the film’s cumulative global haul now.”[1] For those unfamiliar, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was a groundbreaking 1937 animated film that no other film can compare to. Not even Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki can’t deny the influence Walt Disney’s “the little mermaid and Peter Pan”[2] has on the Japanese film studio.
What makes 2025’s Snow White an abysmal failure is a Molotov cocktail of events surrounding the film. Rachel Zegler’s support for Palestine, as her co-star, Gal Godot, is Israeli. Then her personal Instagram page, where she directing her anger at Trump supporters, “may they never know peace” created a large rift against the Snow White film by Conservative media outlets and reactors alike. She later apologized, but the damage was done.
(Note: A snapshot of Zegler’s scandalous instagram note has made headlines all across the globe. Turns out the Internet is forever.)
It didn’t help that Peter Dinklage, who is short, famous for Game of Thrones and Station Agent, diagnosed with achondroplasia, dismissed the idea of using “dwarves” in Snow White was outdated. His comments from the Marc Maron podcast, from NPR: “Take a step back and look at what you're doing there. It makes no sense to me," he said, about an hour into the 80-minute episode. "You're progressive in one way and you're still making that f***ing backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the f*** are you doing, man?"[3] The outcry from the dwarf community was aghast as many dwarf people who want to break into acting don’t have the chance to play another role.
(Note: Let my man, ItsaGundam, make us laugh for now. Cause it’s only going to get worse for Disney).
What is heartbreaking is that the technological breakthrough the 1937 film did for so many artists, writers, and thinkers, is now reduced to smouldering ash, and no matter what, people are going to get fired for what should have been a slam dunk. Snow White should still attract people because the original story is what people want to see, not a modernized girl boss version that doesn’t help sell the film, nor Rachel Zegler, an entitled actress, who doesn’t know good art when she sees it. And no matter what, the film will not make back the money it needs to recoup the budgetary cost.
It’s hard to say it, but if 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves made Disney into the juggernaut it was, 2025’s Snow White will be its downfall. But no one will ever reach the milestone of success other than the original creator, Walt Disney, who is rolling over in his grave at the disaster his company has turned into. And 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, will always be a classic film that has inspired so many artists, and thinkers, today.
[1] https://collider.com/snow-white-global-box-office-168-million/. Collider. Rahul Mahlotra.
[2] https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/hayao-miyazaki-names-his-favourite-disney-movies-of-all-time/#:~:text=Just%20like%20how%20the%20Little,Miyazaki's%20favourite%20Disney%20movies%20below. Found April 6th, 2025. Far Out. Calum Russel. 09.18.2023
[3] https://www.npr.org/2022/01/26/1075761231/peter-dinklage-disney#:~:text=Peter%20Dinklage%20slams%20Disney%20over%20Snow%20White%20remake%20:%20NPR&text=Peter%20Dinklage%20slams%20Disney%20over%20Snow%20White%20remake%20The%20actor,approach%22%20to%20the%20live%20version. Rachel Treisman. 01. 26.22. Found 04.06.2025