'Snow White' opens to sleepy $43 million at box office

The Walt Disney Co.’s live-action, controversy-bedeviled “Snow White” opened in theaters with a sleepy $43 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

With a budget above $250 million, “Snow White” had set out with higher ambitions, particularly since it returns Disney to its very origins. The 1937 original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the company’s first animated feature, and paid for its Burbank studio lot.

But this “Snow White” struggled to find anything like a fairy tale ending. The runup to release was plagued by controversies over the film’s handling of the dwarfs, who are rendered in CGI, and backlashes over comments by its star, Rachel Zegler. The PR headaches prompted Disney to pull back on its premiere.

Also working against the film, directed by Marc Webb: poor reviews. Critics were largely not impressed with Disney’s latest live-action remake, with reviews coming in just 43% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes.

There’s been a wide variance between the box-office performance of other “live-action” Disney remakes, but “Snow White” might mark a new nadir. Jon Favreau’s photorealistic “The Lion King” (2019) didn’t have great reviews, either, but grossed more than $1.6 billion worldwide. “Snow White” opened worse than “Dumbo” (a $46 million opening in 2019) and well shy of “Cinderella” territory ($67.9 million in 2015).

The result will add to questions over Disney’s long-term strategy of mining its vault for live-action remakes. In the pipeline are upcoming new versions of “Moana” and “Tangled.” A live-action “Lilo & Stitch” launches in May.

Efforts to modernize “Snow White,” though, quickly ran afoul. In 2022, actor Peter Dinklage criticized the remake plans as “backward.” Disney ultimately opted to drop “and the Seven Dwarfs” from the original’s title, and animate the dwarfs. Some right-wing commentators targeted “Snow White” and Zegler’s casting as an overly “woke” production. Delays and reshoots also ran up costs.

Warner Bros.’ “Alto Knights,” a period gangster film starring Robert De Niro in both lead roles, was a total misfire. The Barry Levinson-directed film, which cost about $45 million to make, opened with just $3.2 million from 2,651 theaters. The flop of “Alto Knights” followed another misfire for Warner Bros. with Bong Joon Ho’s big-budget sci-fi “Mickey 17.” In three weeks, it’s tallied $40.2 million domestically against a $118 million budget.