Will Hollywood once again fail to learn from its mistakes?
Will Hollywood once again fail to learn from its mistakes?
W hen will Hollywood learn that making “woke” films is a financially risky proposition when the Democratic Party, according to CNN, has the lowest approval rating — 29 percent — ever recorded for it by the network?
Snow White, an attempt by Disney to remake its classic 1937 animated feature with a live-action cast and some heavy-handed messaging of progressive values, is cratering at the box office. Its opening weekend brought only $43 million domestically, the worst opening for a Disney live-action remake ever. Because the film cost nearly $270 million to produce, it would need to bring in over $600 million to break even after marketing and other expenses.
A video of a screening of the movie, posted on X, showed a large cinema that appeared to be vacant save for the lone cameraman. The video is sarcastically captioned “So many people here to watch Snow White,” with one commenter writing, “Snow White and the Seven Viewers.”
There are many explanations for the failure of Snow White that have nothing to do with its ideological messaging. The film is poorly edited, its CGI animation doesn’t blend well with live actors, and the plot at times has holes befitting Swiss cheese. But there’s no doubt that the movie was tagged as “woke” early on, and that didn’t help.
In the lead-up to the movie’s release, Disney revealed that it had dumped the prince as Snow White’s love interest in favor of the Robin Hood–like leader of a bandit gang. The seven dwarfs were dubbed “magical creatures” to avoid giving offense. A leak that pictured Snow White’s bandit friends, who looked like a multiracial group out of a Benetton ad, led to snickers that the movie should be called “Snow White and Her Seven Politically Correct Companions.” Rachel Zegler, who plays Snow White, said her lines would have her pleading for fairness and equality with an authoritarian Evil Queen.
It soon got worse. Zegler shared the movie’s trailer on X and signed off her caption with, “And always remember, Free Palestine.” Gal Gadot, her Israeli-born co-star, made her displeasure well known (and has since declined several requests to promote the movie). Then, after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Zegler posted on Instagram a profanity-laced tirade wishing that “trump voters and trump himself never know peace.” She proceeded to attack the original, beloved Snow White movie at every opportunity. She complained that the 1937 movie had “a big focus on her love story with the guy who literally stalks her. Weird, weird.”
Disney went into shock. “No studio wants its movie branded as a DEI lesson,” Martin Kaplan, head of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, told the New York Times. He mourned that shifts in politics had sealed the film’s fate: “I’m not sure anyone could have predicted that a reactionary force could so quickly and dramatically reverse the cultural winds, but that is certainly what happened.” Indeed, seven pre-screenings of the movie had been received poorly, and desperate last-minute tweaking only muddled it. The film was even dumped on by David Hale Hand, the son of the supervising director of the original Snow White: “From what I’ve read, [the new film] bears no reflection to the original story. It’s so far off base that it’s ridiculous.” His wife Sandra echoed a similar sentiment, telling Page Six that “they’ve taken it and moved into the politics of what is woke. They’re taking a beautiful and beautifully drawn story and destroying what was Snow White.”
Snow White isn’t the only recent film to badly misjudge its potential audience. The Apprentice, a searing 2024 biographical film about Donald Trump’s early real estate career, grossed just $4 million domestically and $17.3 million worldwide, not even coming close to recouping its costs. By comparison, the film biography Reagan, which came out at the same time, grossed over $30 million worldwide despite getting favorable reviews from only 20 percent of movie critics.
Popular culture — whether it be books, TV, film, music, or video games — remains dominated by the Left. Sandwiched between much of our entertainment are messages that perpetuate liberal themes. Hollywood is free to peddle any manner of storylines: The military is bloodthirsty, radical Muslims must be handled with kid gloves, trial lawyers and climate-change activists are crusading heroes, corporations are evil and pollute the planet. But since Hollywood is a bottom-line industry, it would be wise to contemplate the box office lesson of many of its most recent “messaging” films: Go woke, go broke.