Despite All the Predictions of Doom, Disney's 'Snow White' Remake Actually Did Worse Than Anyone Could've Imagined

Fraser Gray. Shutterstock Images.

By way of full disclosure, I'm hoping this is the last blog I ever post about this topic. I had a lot of dreams when I was a kid. I wanted to be a Big League ballplayer. A Starship captain. A brilliant teenager who gets superpowers from a radioactive spider. And not one of my plans ever included me being an aging, near-sighted, functioning alcoholic who writes about about a medieval fairy tale girl who gets saved from food poisoning by a kiss from a royal. 

Yet here I am. In this line of "work," sometimes you have to go where current events take you. And the past couple of years they've led me repeatedly to Disney's live-action Snow White remake, and the epic Nerd Rage backlash it's caused ever since titular star Rachel Zegler started dumping on the source material.

The film industry on the whole saw a very expensive disaster coming:

Disney watched helplessly as the storm went Category 5, made landfall, and threatened to blow hundreds of millions of dollars all to hell:

And now we've seen the opening weekend. Which, by any metric, was far worse than even the most dire, pessimistic predictions could've imagined:

The Hollywood Reporter - The mood was grim Sunday on the Disney lot as Snow White opened behind expectations to an estimated $43 million domestically. Globally, the live-action remake of the iconic 1937 film was expected to clear $100 million, but instead came in at $87.3 million.

Final weekend numbers released Monday showed the domestic opening coming in lower at $42.2 million; ditto for global. The pic took in $43.9 million overseas for a global start of $86.1 million, according to Comscore.

While those hauls wouldn’t normally spell disaster for a female-targeted pic, Snow White has found itself in potential bomb territory because of its hefty production budget of $270 million before another $100 million or so in marketing costs.    

This is what can happen when you try to pander to certain subsets of the sociological divide instead of focusing on the only thing that should count: Entertaining a mass audience. Disney couldn't get Zegler to shut up about her strong, brave, girl boss who doesn't need a man to become the empowered heroine she was always meant to be or whatever. And as a result, people decided they had better things to do with their weekend than get a Gender Studies lecture.  By the millions. The poison apple became box office poison. As the old expression goes, they showed up to theaters dressed as empty seats:

To me, what's more significant than seats without asses in them is the fact people went to the theater specifically to capture the desolation on video. And went to the websites to screengrab the unused seating charts. That's not a demonstration of how bad your movie is, but how toxic you've made your brand. Any studio can swing and miss while trying to make a good film. It happens all the time. But when your public is actively enjoying your little vanity projects decline? That's a tough thing to come back from. 

And there's probably no coming back from the viral trend of everyone comparing your attempt at an upbeat, Happily Ever After ending to … well, the obvious:

But make no mistake, the people who have seen Snow White don't like it. Even the most positive reviews are tepid at best. And they are in a minority:

IMDb: 2/10.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 44%  

Metacritic: 47%  

The Guardian: “Toe-Curlingly terrible.”  

Rolling Stone “The Most Controversial Disney Adult- Nightmare Ever.”  

Vanity Fair: “Good enough for TV.”  

Box Office: $43 million ($3m less than Dumbo.)

By way of comparison, that IMDb rating is among the lowest ever. Lower even than the live action Dragonball movie starring a white American guy:

And by grossing less in its opening weekend than even the Dumbo remake gives Snow White the lowest box office in this whole wretched sub-genre. 

Which, if Hollywood was smart (a dubious prospect at best), they'd learn the lesson that the public is looking for the same thing they've wanted since moving pictures were first projected onto a screen: Good stories. Stories with messages, themes, lessons, allegories, social commentaries. But first and foremost, ones that are entertaining. We're not piling the kids into the SUV and shelling out exorbitant, confiscatory prices for tickets and polyunsaturated junk food just to be nagged at by a collection of adult theater kids. Parents don't owe you their brand loyalty. It's a transactional arrangement. Make movies they want to take their kids to, and they'll see you there. Give them the slightest hint you're going to bang them of the head with your idea of how you think they should think, and they'll stay home and play Mario Kart. 

Even if the star who turned this particular part of Disney's brand so toxic thinks otherwise:

The public - and the critics - have spoken. The next move is yours, Mouse.