“Lips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as…”
Well, as white as Disney could allow it to be while still checking their DEI boxes, I suppose.
But when it comes to who is the fairest one of all, the entertainment company’s “Snow White” remake is clearly not. The kids entertainment juggernaut released its latest live action remake to a paltry $43 million on its opening weekend ($87 million if you count overseas revenue), far shy of the $250 million it took to make the movie.
And that was before marketing expenses.
Related: 'Snow White' Is Likely to Bomb, and Even Disney Knows It
Which probably weren’t cheap, considering the uphill climb Disney faced to overcome the film’s numerous scandals, including their casting a Latina actress to play the titular “Snow White” character in a move many took as an intentional racial snub, swapping the seven dwarves for seven “magical characters” of various shapes and ethnicities before backtracking and replacing them with creepy CGI dwarves that are the stuff of nightmares, and rebranding the iconic "prince" as a rogue thief who leads a band of socialist forest-dwellers on a mission to overthrow the corrupt queen.
Top all that off with star actress Rachel Ziegler going on a press tour in which she repeatedly insulted the original 1937 film as a backwards, sexist bore, and you had a recipe for a dish it seems few people were eager to order.
The film's less-than-ideal rollout - which Disney topped off with an uncharacteristically low-key premiere that looked less like a party and more like prolonged life support - wasn't helped much by critics' reviews, many of which described the film as a flashy but sloppy mess that couldn't hone in on a cohesive storyline, seemed unable to reconcile the original tale with their new "modern" twists, and which simply abandoned too much of the spirit of the beloved classic to appease diehard Disney fans.
In fact, it looks like “Snow White” might just be Disney’s lowest grossing live-action remake thus far.
It seems "woke" Disney has traded "heigh ho," for more "ho-hum."