Realizing What a Disaster They've Got on Their Hands, Disney Has Cancelled the Usual Premieres for 'Snow White'

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When ABC trotted out Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot to present something or other at the Oscars, it was a reminder of a few things. First, that the network is owned by Disney, who has the two of them starring in a live action reboot of Snow White. That the premise of the movie involve a sentient, wise, and omniscient mirror who tells Gadot she's less attractive than Zegler. And that ridiculous miscalculation is just the first of about a billion things that have gone wrong with this movie since it was first announced seemingly 100 years ago. 

I won't do a deep dive into how many rakes Disney has stepped on since they decided to greenlight a film literally no one needed, asked for, or wanted. But from the moment Peter Dinklage railed against the idea of hiring dwarf actors to act as dwarfs (thus putting seven dwarf actors out of work), the studio has been put on its back foot and never regained balance. They tried introducing a collection of diverse, full-sized actors of both genders to play those parts, and were basically laughed off the internet. So now they're going with hideous CGI garden gnomes in their "live action" movie. And all this was before Zegler started trashing the beloved 1930s original because it doesn't fit her particular worldview. 

In short, this whole misguided enterprise has been an example of the entertainment conglomerate in the world taking the IP its entire enterprise was built on, and painting a bullseye on it. And the public has responded:

Yeah, I got like a C in Marketing, but I'm pretty sure that when a video that features lines like "If I saw this movie on a plane, I'd still walk out" and "I'm rooting for the poison apple" is getting a better response than the trailer for your $300 million movie, then you've made your brand irredeemably toxic.

Now with the movie set to hit theaters, Disney apparently recognizes Snow White is too far gone to be salvaged at the last minute. So they're not even going to try:

 Source -  Disney is hosting a Hollywood premiere of “Snow White” on March 15, but the studio won’t be rolling out a robust red carpet like it usually does.

The afternoon festivities will include a pre-party and screening at the El Capitan Theatre with titular star Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen, expected to attend. However, the red carpet will not include the dozens of media outlets usually invited by Disney to interview the cast and creatives at its premieres. 

Instead, coverage will be limited to photographers and a house crew. 

I'm going to acknowledge what most of the comments under Variety's X post are asking, which is what "controversy" Gadot has been involved in, exactly. The one they cite is that she spoke to the Anti-Defamation League's annual summit in New York, pledged support for her home country, and denounced antisemitism. But if I had a solution to ethnic hatreds that go back to Biblical times, I wouldn't be burying it in the sixth paragraph of a blog about a stupid family movie. Instead I'll just leave it here and do the only thing any of us can, which is keep praying for peace. Moving on. …

What we've got here is tacit acknowledgement by Disney that in spite of all their efforts and more than a quarter billion dollar investment, what they've produced is a very big, very costly embarrassment. There is nothing Hollywood enjoys more than celebrating itself. Red carpets. SUV limos. Rows of photographers. Sycophants from entertainment media clawing at each other for the chance to get within an arm's length of a movie star and ask them fawning questions about how amazing their project is and what an experience it was to work with such talented people. Studio executives love that scene so much that even exchanging movie roles for sexual favors is only a distant second. 

But for this dog of a film, they're giving that all up. Because they've figured out it's only going to make things worse to draw attention to it. It's the major studio production version of the SNL skit they stick in the last five minutes of the show to fill air time. The song that isn't good enough for an album, so you only release it on a Spotify playlist. The Barstool blog that just didn't come out the way you wanted, so you throw it up on a holiday weekend. It's just that none of the above cost a megacorporation 300 million bucks they'll never be able to recoup. 

It's at the point now that the most disappointing thing of all would be if this actually turns out to be a decent movie. But this business of cancelling the red carpet should remove all doubt of that. Hopefully it'll be what we've all suspected from the beginning: Something they'll remember forever for being one of the most cursed productions in Hollywood history. We'll soon find out.