The crisis facing the Walt Disney Company over its controversial Snow White reboot deepened today amid pictures of empty cinemas and screens with no bookings in primetime slots following a poor opening weekend.
Studio bosses had hoped that the reboot of the 1937 original, which had a budget of more than $270million (£210million), would launch with at least £79million ($100million) in ticket sales.
But the movie starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot took just $87.3million (£67.4million) globally including $43million (£33million) in the US after a slow start followed a slew of negative reviews.
Meanwhile, in mainland China, Snow White ranked outside the top five movies in cinemas – bringing in less than $1million (£800,000) in its first three days.
The film has also been accused of ‘wokeness’ after the Seven Dwarfs were re-imagined as a group of ‘magical creatures’ – while comments by Zegler and Gadot ahead of its release have also faced criticism.
The Mail’s Brian Viner slammed it as a ‘painfully muddle-headed affair’, adding: ‘This production has been cursed from the start. Disney’s contorted attempts not to offend anyone have somehow managed to offend everyone.’
One prospective cinema-goer shared on social media how the movie sold zero tickets at one point for a prime weekend slot in the US, and just one for another screening. They posted on X: ‘Opening Friday night for Disney’s Snow White in Imax. Only ONE person bought tickets for tonight. Yeah, this movie’s gonna flop.’
My Snow White screening lookin’ a little empty
pic.twitter.com/j1Tj6aH5Lx
— Dr. Sydney Watson (@SydneyLWatson) March 21, 2025
Empty theater for Snow White’s debut pic.twitter.com/c7IlIUWuih
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 23, 2025
Alongside the caption was a photograph of the cinema booking screen, showing just a single seat reserved.
They also posted another image of Saturday night’s bookings and penned: ‘And for Saturday night? ZERO. I’ve never seen a major movie from Disney have this little interest opening weekend. This is hilariously abysmal.’
The post attracted more than 13million views and drew comments from people who observed similar scenes in their cinemas – with one writing: ‘I have one better. Dolby Cinema and only a small handful of people.’
However, a former cinema worker provided reasoning for the possible lack of bookings. They wrote: ‘I worked at a cinema for many years. You’ve screenshot for the 10:15pm showing. That’s pretty late, and usually has much lower attendance. The busiest time is usually the 7 o’clock hour.’
It comes as another post on X shared a video of Zegler hoping people would ‘wait in line’ to see movies she stars in.
It was captioned with: ‘Prior to Snow White’s release, actress Rachel Zegler told her critics that audiences would wait in line to see her. Snow White is the lowest performing Disney movie in decades. No one waited in line to see it.’
Zegler said in the clip: ‘I can only hope that despite my flaws and despite my cracks and my breaks – and there are many of them – that at every premiere and everything I do, people will wait in line to see.
Another video post on X showed a large cinema that seemed to be vacant ironically captioned ‘so many people here to watch Snow White’, before panning to show rows upon rows of empty seats.
One wrote: ‘Snow White and the seven viewers.’ Another added: ‘Go woke, go broke – live from the box office.’
MailOnline approached viewers for their thoughts on the controversial remake – and many were not impressed.
Friends Shannon, 28, and Chelsea, 24, were left disappointed by the film and awarded it a one-star rating.
Shannon said: ‘We didn’t like it. It was really not fleshed out. They added so many bits that lead absolutely nowhere.
‘It’s like there’s no intention. The story needed more purpose. It’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs yet it felt like the dwarfs were there for ten minutes.’
Karen Gravis, 46, said of Disney’s use of CGI to create the dwarfs: ‘I don’t like that. I think they should have just given the jobs to the people that can do it themselves. That was disappointing.’
But NHS worker Rachel Bulman, 50, gave it 4.5 stars and praised the remake as ‘really good’. She added: ‘It didn’t take away from the story that says if you keep true to yourself, be kind and fair, then you can overcome anything.’
Mahgor Bakhtiari, 23, a Persian student in London, said she was not disappointed by the decision to cut Prince Charming from the storyline, although her her boyfriend Arian Dehghnai, 21, said his absence felt like ‘something is missing’.
And Oliver Thydeman, 31, a kitchen worker, said he welcomed any changes that the adaptation will bring to the classic original, adding: ‘If they kept it to the original it might be a bit bland. It would be good to not have the same story at the end of the movie.’
Meanwhile Celeste Jay, 37, who works in retail and lives in South London, said: ‘I don’t understand the criticism, I think a love story is nice.’ But she added: ‘I think it probably is a bit woke.’
The remake has come under fire due to comments from Zegler and the absence of the iconic song Someday My Prince Will Come.
In a 2022 interview, she said: ‘There’s a big focus on her love story with the guy who literally stalks her. Weird, weird. So we didn’t do that this time.’
The movie had set out with far higher ambitions, particularly since it returned Disney to its origins – given the 1937 original Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was the company’s first animated feature. It paid for its studio lot in Burbank, California.
But the run-up to its release was plagued by controversies over the film’s handling of the dwarfs, who are rendered in CGI, with Disney then pulling back on its premiere.
There was also backlash about pro-Palestinian comments by Zegler and pro-Israel comments by Israeli actress Gadot.
Critics were also unimpressed with the live-action remake, with reviews coming in just 44 per cent ‘fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes.
Snow White opened in the US with a worse total than 2019’s Dumbo, a $46million opening, and was well shy of ‘Cinderella’, which took $68million in 2015.
The result will likely add to the questions hovering over Disney’s long-term strategy of mining its vault for live-action remakes – with upcoming new versions of Moana and Tangled in the pipeline, as well as a live-action Lilo & Stitch launching in May.
Efforts to modernise Snow White quickly ran afoul – with actor Peter Dinklage criticising the remake plans in 2022 as ‘backward’.
Disney also decided to drop ‘And The Seven Dwarfs’ from the original’s title and chose to animate the dwarfs – while delays and reshoots also ran up costs.
The film has become ‘one of the most troubled projects in Disney’s 102-year history,’ according to The New York Times.
Reviews have been scathing – the Guardian called it ‘toe-curlingly terrible’ – while others were a bit kinder, with The Washington Post calling it ‘surprisingly entertaining’.
‘While it’s a disappointing opening weekend, we can’t write off the film’s performance until we see how it holds up in the coming weeks,’ said Daniel Loria, senior vice president at the Boxoffice Company.
Focus Features’ spy thriller Black Bag, starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, was up from the previous weekend to second place in the US, earning $4.4million, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported yesterday.
In third place, also up one spot from the prior weekend, was Marvel and Disney’s Captain America: Brave New World at $4.1million. Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford star in the latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Black comedy Mickey 17 from Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho slipped to fourth place, at $3.9million.
Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo feature in the Warner Bros. sci-fi tale about the lives – and deaths – around a man who volunteers for hazardous space missions.
And last weekend’s leader, Paramount’s action-comedy Novocaine, suffered a drop in ticket sales, taking in just $3.8million.
