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Credit: DisneyThe Walt Disney Company is riding high. After Disney CEO Bob Iger shuffled the company’s movie lineup last year, it paid huge dividends with two billion dollar hits in Inside Out 2 (2024) and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).
Disney can potentially have four billion-dollar movies this year, with Moana 2 (2024) and Mufasa: The Lion King (2024) scheduled for later this year. Disney also got fans jacked up for the start of next year with a preview of Captain America: Brave New World (2025) at the D23 Expo in Brazil this past weekend.
Despite all the goodwill that Disney has created this year, a looming disaster is coming early next year: the live-action Snow White (2025).
The film has been married in controversy from the start, and last week, the film’s star, Rachel Zegler, made things more difficult for The Walt Disney Company.
Shortly after Donald Trump’s presidential win, Zegler posted a message on her Instagram account expressing her disappointment. The message ended with, “May Trump supporters and voters and Trump himself never know peace.” Despite the relatively benign nature of her comments, many Trump supporters saw them as a direct threat.
Many Trump supporters also called out Disney’s hypocrisy for firing Mandalorian actress Gina Carano for her comments but for keeping Zegler in Snow White despite these comments and others she had previously made.
The Snow White film has been a problem for Disney ever since it announced that Zegler would take over the role of the Disney Princess.
Disney fired @ginacarano for much less than this. https://t.co/OkNOYkEMPl
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) November 13, 2024
These newest comments from Zegler put Disney into an even bigger bind, given that the film needs to make at least $300 million to cover its production costs.
The Cost of ‘Snow White’
According to Forbes, for Disney to break even on the live-action Snow White, the film must gross around $340 million at the worldwide box office. Forbes analyzed some recent figures released by Disney on the film to determine just how much the movie will need to gross.
Most of the time, Disney is tight-lipped about how much a film costs, but because this movie was filmed in the United Kingdom, Disney had to release the figures to the government.
Because Disney shot most of the movie in the United Kingdom, it qualified for the British Government’s Film Tax Relief. This relief gives movie companies up to 25 percent of the film’s cost to film in London, provided that it represents at least 10 percent of the movie’s total cost.
This means that Disney had to disclose the cost of the film to receive reimbursement from the British government. In this case, Disney received $41.1 million back from the British government for filming after spending nearly $170 million filming in London.
Rachel Zegler Controversies
These latest comments from Rachel Zegler only add to the list of problems that the film has faced during its production. As soon as Zegler was cast, there was an internet backlash, with fans denouncing the casting on social media.
Zegler is a Latina actress who formerly starred in West Side Story (2022). But Zegler had none of the criticism and clapped back at critics in interviews and on social media, which only made things worse.
The movie’s criticism only got worse last summer when a photo from the film leaked online showing that Disney decided to remove the dwarfs and replace them with seven “magical creatures.” Once Iger put the movie on the shelf, the scenes with the magical creatures were reshot, and the seven dwarfs were put back in the film.
Zegler also caused a stir when she criticized the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1939), saying that her character version wouldn’t be like other princesses.
After Disney released a trailer for the new Snow White film, it received more downvotes on YouTube than any other movie trailer in history, with an astonishing nine million dislikes.
However, Zegler’s latest comments may end up costing Disney in court.
Gina Carano Case
In 2021, Gina Carano was fired from The Mandalorian after she made comments comparing Republicans in the United States of America with Jewish people during the Holocaust. The Walt Disney Company allowed Carano to apologize for her remarks and meet with Jewish leaders for a conversation about the Holocaust.
After Carano refused, she was fired from the Star Wars show. After her firing, Carano took to social media to point out that her co-star Pedro Pascal made comments comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and with Confederates, and he was not fired.
Then, in February, Carano sued The Walt Disney Company for discrimination and wrongful termination. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), funded her lawsuit.
As part of her case against Disney, Carano introduced co-star Pedro Pascal’s social media posts, claiming that LucasFilm allowed him to stay in his role despite the derogatory posts.
Disney has asked a Federal Judge to dismiss Carano’s lawsuit, claiming that the company had every right to fire her after she espoused views it did not believe in.
Besides the social media posts from Pascal, Carano’s lawyers have also introduced posts from Marvel star Mark Ruffalo that claimed Trump’s government was similar to the Nazis in the 1930s.
The case between Disney and Carano is still pending.
Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Problem
One can assume that Zegler’s comments will only continue as critical and fan backlash against the film continues and grows louder the closer it gets to its release date.
That means Disney’s Snow White headache will continue until the film is finally released in March, but the damage to Disney’s finances and reputation will last significantly longer.