Disney’s new live action Snow White is being billed as the most hated film of all time, by people who haven’t actually seen it.
On 21st March 2025, Disney’s long-in-gestation live action take on Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs arrives in cinemas.
This is a very big deal for Disney. Given that it’s mined its back catalogue of animated hits extensively for its live action output over the last 15 years, this is the first time it’s tackled its crown jewels this way. The firm’s debut animated feature, and one of the most iconic movies in the entire Disney catalogue.
Believe the reports, and Disney has spent nearly $300m bringing the movie to life, and it’ll be looking for sizeable returns on it. Coming to that shortly. Furthermore, the movie may actually end up being not very good. I can’t call that, though, because in common with many people online slagging the film off, I’ve not actually seen it.
Some background. There’s a dual lineage that’s got the film to us. The 1937 original animated movie is one, but Tim Burton’s 2010 live action take on Alice In Wonderland is the other. I remember walking out of an early screening of that, the film seeping out of my head within minutes of watching it. Didn’t hate it, wished Tim Burton had applied his considerable talents elsewhere, but moved on.
Disney didn’t. It sat back and watched $1bn in cinema takings head in its direction, levels that even Marvel films hadn’t hit at that point yet. If it had been mulling mining its animated films for more live action features beforehand, it did so with some urgency afterwards. We’ve had everything from Lady And The Tramp and Pinocchio through to The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. Only The Black Cauldron – ironically a film that might be fascinating to remake – is seemingly safe.
Disney had tried this strategy before, with the pair of 101 Dalmatians films in the 1990s. But this time, the commercial response changed the live action strategy of the company, yet it resisted Snow White for some time. It wasn’t until 2016 that it got to the top of the pile, and over the ensuing years, personnel were signed up to help bring the project to life. Director Marc Webb was aboard in 2019, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson was in from the start, and Greta Gerwig’s writing was thrown into the mix in 2021.
That’s not a bad line-up of talent behind the camera, and in front, the likes of Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot and Titus Burgess certainly know how to put in a screen performance.
But the hate started early, and it’s been unrelenting. Some of that hate was triggered by self-inflicted wounds, some wasn’t. ‘Snow Woke’ bellowed the usual places when Rachel Zegler landed the title role, complaining that she wasn’t a white woman. This became a fast-trending point on social media, even on pre-Musk Twitter, and it quickly put Disney on the defensive. Criticism from Peter Dinklage about the project was amplified, despite pushback. Then the fact that the film is Snow White, and not Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, has also been pounced on.
Other offences? Rachel Zegler isn’t a huge fan of the original film, she absolutely isn’t a fan of Donald Trump, and on both points, she’s made her position known. This has not gone down well. Then there were reshoots and delays. Also, updating elements of a story compared to the version made nearly 90 years ago.
The sum total of this is a film that one YouTuber – with over a million subscribers – has labelled Snow White “the most hated upcoming movie ever seen”. Or not yet seen, to be more accurate. I’m going to suggest said YouTuber hasn’t been treated to a preview screening yet, but happy to be corrected.
Curious, I searched for videos from this particular creator relating to Snow White over the last year, and it turns out it’s good box office for them. Long eviscerations of a film that’s not out yet, interspersed with adverts for a range of products. It’s no surprise to learn that there’s solid business in hate.
But this channel is far from alone, and Snow White appears to be the hate target of the moment. I’ve spent, on and off, the last few days perusing material from people who are hugely angry about a film they’ve not seen. There are a lot of things woven in here, granted. A dislike of Disney, a dislike of diversity, and a particular dislike of Rachel Zegler.
Then there’s the trailer, and the fact that it’s received over a million downvotes is being paraded as a kind of trophy, a statistic regularly quoted as part of criticism of the movie. I’m long past the phase in my life where I saw a trailer as anything more than a slight indication of the movie it’s promoting, and tend to give them a miss as a rule. I’m also aware that hate-bombing happens, where people, irrespective of what they’re watching, will hit the down-pointing thumb. I can’t help but feel that while some people genuinely dislike things, others actively want to.
There’s a broader narrative of Disney schadenfreude sitting in the background here as well, of course. But I don’t remember Tim Burton’s take on Dumbo attracting this amount of ire. Or Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella. Or Robert Zemeckis’ oddly entirely forgettable Pinocchio. What is it about Marc Webb’s Snow White movie that’s got people so upset?
I watched the trailer that’s got people so upset to try and find out. It’s not sending me off to preorder a ticket, but it’s not to my eyes distinctly better or worse than promos for previous animation re-workings. The dwarfs look a bit ropey, but we’re not talking the original Sonic The Hedgehog trailer here. Still, comments under the Snow White teaser – and you can see them here – are actively tallying the ‘dislike’ total, and it’s undeniably high.
The film may end up being dreadful, and I accept that if you look towards the less happy side of the internet, you get what you expect. Yet this wasn’t me putting in targeted searches. This is the stuff that algorithms are shuttling to the top of results pages.
Willing something to fail before it’s been seen remains baffling to me. I know it’s nothing new – the film ecosystem has been battling this online for a good decade and change now – but I don’t think I’ve seen it as targeted as I have with Snow White in a long time.
The hate campaign does appear to have its scalp, too. Box office tracking suggests a US opening weekend in the $60-70m range, as opposed to the $174m of American business the 2017 Beauty And The Beast generated in its first few days and released at the same time of year. The Lion King did even more. $60-70m is still a lot of money, and these films do have long tails to them, but for a high profile blockbuster, it’s likely below original expectations. The studio will have been aiming for $1bn box office gross, certainly to justify the expense, and that looks like a tall order.
Disney’s not been discouraged, but outside of Marvel and Star Wars, animation remakes are the only live action productions it seems confident in selling. Look at how it squandered the terrific The Young Woman And The Sea last year. Elsewhere, we’ve already got Lilo & Stitch coming this year, and Moana the next, neither of which are attracting seismic levels of hate. Guy Ritchie is circling a film of Hercules, and directors are linked with Tangled, The Aristocats and Robin Hood too.
Snow White has become something of a sign of the times, though, where once people have decide they’re going to hate the film, the film itself becomes irrelevant. It’s more fun to join in the brick throwing than it is to go and find something different to watch.
I guess I’m left wondering what’d happen if the film turns out to be really rather good, and whether those filling their social media channels with attacks will reverse ferret? I suspect not, but I’m happy to be surprised. As it stands, hate is the sport, and the selected movie of the moment is required for a public flogging.
It’d just be nice if, y’know, the actual quality of the final film was at least taken into account.
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