The Walt Disney Company reportedly is scaling back its Hollywood premiere at the El Capitan Theatre for Snow White, which stars Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot.
According to a report by Marc Malkin at Variety Disney has barred media interviews at the event. He shared that “the red carpet will not include the dozens of media outlets usually invited by Disney to interview the cast and creatives at its premieres.” However, he did note that photographers are being invited.
This report comes in the wake of one from Molly Clanton at The Daily Mail that indicated that Disney was minimizing the amount of press at its London premiere for Snow White to prevent Rachel Zegler from fielding questions.
A source told Clanton, “Disney are already anticipating an anti-woke backlash against Snow White and have reduced the media schedule to just a handful of tightly controlled press events.”
As for why, the source explained, “That is why they have taken the highly unusual step not to host a London premiere for the film and are minimising the amount of press questions that Rachel Zegler gets.”
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Limiting Zegler makes sense given there was significant backlash to the actress’ comments about the film back in 2023 and throughout 2024. For example, she told ExtraTV, ““The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird. Weird. So we didn’t do that this time.”
When being asked bout the Prince, she said, “We have a different approach to what I’m sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because like we cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnap, great dude.”
She continued, “It’s one of those things that I think everyone’s going to have their assumptions about what it’s actually going to be, but it’s really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful. And whether or not she finds love along the way is anybody’s guess until 2024. All of Andrew’s scenes could get. Who knows? It’s Hollywood, baby!”
“It’s an inner journey that she goes on to find her true self. And she meets a lot of people along the way that make the journey really incredible,” she concluded.
She also told Variety, “I just mean it’s no longer 1937, and we absolutely wrote a Snow White–”
Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot, who is playing the Evil Queen, then asserted, “She’s not gonna be saved by the prince.”
Zegler concurred, “She’s not gonna be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love.”
“She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be. The leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, brave, and true. And so it’s just a really incredible story for, I think, young people everywhere to see themselves in,” she concluded.
Zegler also shared to Entertainment Weekly, “The reality is that the cartoon was made 85 years ago and therefore it’s extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world. And so when we came to reimagining the actual role of Snow White it became about the fairest of them all meaning who is the most just. And who can become a fantastic leader.”
“And the reality is, you know, Snow White has to learn a lot of lessons about coming into her own power before she can come into power over a kingdom,” Zegler shared.
Gadot also said, “Also the fact that she’s not going to be saved by The Prince and she’s the proactive one and she’s the one who set the terms is what makes it so relevant to where we are today.”
However, another possible reason for why Disney is cutting back the film’s red carpet are reports that the film’s budget got out of control with multiple reshoots and the company might be trying to not spend every dollar that they can.
Caroline Reid at Forbes reported back in September 2023 that Disney had already spent $209.3 million on the film as of July 2022. A little over a year later Reid reported that the budget had ballooned to $269.4 million albeit, Disney received a $55.5 million reimbursement bringing its net spend to $213.9 million. However, given the film still had to go through post-production as well as rumors of other reshoots and fixes, it’s rumored the budget bulged to over half a billion.
Scooper WDW Pro claimed, “We know that this film had a budget that was somewhere around $300 million. They have overshot that significantly according to my source and this film is now heading towards for The Force Awakens and The Rise of Palpatine — That’s what I’m going to call it — kind of budget.”
“We’re nearing the half billion dollar mark according to the source,” he shared.
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Furthermore, having more press might not actually help the already anemic box office grosses this film is supposed to bring in. Box office analyst Shawn Robbins at Box Office Theory notes that Snow White’s domestic opening weekend box office is expected to gross between $52 million and $71 million with a pinpoint prediction of $56 million. As for its total domestic gross, he revealed it is tracking between $130 million and $209 million with a pinpoint of just $155 million.
For comparison, the last live-action adaptation, The Little Mermaid had an opening weekend of $95.5 million and it went on to gross a total of $298.1 million domestically. The film earned another $271.4 million internationally for a global gross of $569.6 million.
What do you make of Disney barring media interviews from its Hollywood premiere of Snow White?
What about the poor "little people" who lost income due to CGI?
Makes sense. Can't have your star accusing everyone of patriarchy and screaming about communism. This movie will crash and burn, and very few people will watch it.