Is Snow White A Box Office Bomb?

Fortunes Do Not Look Fair For Snow White

As far as how these opening weekend numbers look regarding the film becoming a box office success, it is not the best outcome for Disney. Snow White underwent several lengthy reshooting periods, pushing the production budget to between $240-$270 million. In modern Hollywood, around the same budget is usually applied for marketing and distribution costs, meaning Snow White will have set Disney back by around $500 million when all is said and done.

This means that Snow White will have to earn over $500 million during its box office run to begin turning a profit. Given the opening weekend numbers of $87.3 million, things are not looking good for Snow White. The film would need to prove incredibly long-lasting in theaters to have a chance of overcoming this projected $500 million break-even point, and after earning only $44 million domestically in its opening weekend, Snow White looks unlikely to even cross the $100 million domestic mark.

This is made even less likely due to the increasingly short theatrical periods allotted to films in modern times. The wait times between a movie being released in theaters and being released on digital or streaming are becoming increasingly short, meaning Snow White will likely not be given the time it would need to have long legs at the box office. While it is far too early to categorize Snow White as an outright box office bomb thus far, the many factors working against it make it unlikely to escape that fate eventually.

Did The Snow White Controversy Hurt The Movie?

Those Angry At Snow White Were Not Its Target Audience

Based on the online reaction to Snow White over the last few years, the burning question for many will be whether the controversies surrounding the production affected its box office performance. Of course, it would be ignorant to say that the division did not impact the movie’s reception at all. After all, most online spaces for the movie – be that on social media platforms or movie aggregator websites like IMDb – are filled with angry vitriol directed at several elements of the movie.

All that said, it would be an equally large oversight to simply place all of Snow White‘s box office performance on the controversies. Those that have taken issue with Zegler’s comments about the original movie, for example, are of an older generation, and certainly not Snow White‘s target demographic. Families and children will be mostly oblivious to this, meaning there are other factors at work that have impacted Snow White‘s overall box office performance aside from the small hit it likely took from the divisiveness of recent years.

The Other Factors Behind Snow White’s Box Office Performance

The Film Was Never Set-Up To Become A Box Office Hit

Disregarding the film’s controversial aspects, other elements render its box office performance a disappointing one. As already alluded to, the film’s soaring budget did not help matters and gave the film an uphill battle at the box office from the off. Beyond that, the reviews for the film are not the strongest, with Snow White currently holding a 44% approval score on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. This will undoubtedly have factored into people choosing whether to see the movie on opening weekend or to wait for it to be released on streaming services, the latter seemingly winning out.

Moreover, it is no secret that the appeal of Disney’s live-action remakes has been dwindling for a while. The last bona fide box office hit for a Disney live-action movie was 2019’s The Lion King, with six movies since then – Snow White included – either underperforming at the box office or just about breaking even. Combined with the fact that Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot are not proven box office draws like other Hollywood stars are, there are many reasons why Snow White is struggling to be the fairest in the land at the box office.

How Snow White’s Box Office Compares To Disney’s Other Live-Action Remakes

Disney’s Other Remakes Of Classic Movies Have Performed Better

Finally, the last element worth exploring to contextualize Snow White’s box office performance is how it compares to other live-action remakes from Disney. It is worth noting that many live-action remakes have stemmed from some lesser-known properties, meaning Snow White should only be compared to remakes of Disney’s “classics” collection. Overall, though, Snow White has underperformed in its opening weekend compared to most of its peers.

Evidently, Snow White is mᴀssively underperforming in comparison to most other major Disney live-action remakes. To add insult to injury, Snow White also has the highest budget of any live-action Disney remake if the upper numbers reported are to be believed. Overall, Snow White is struggling to keep up with the Disney remakes of the past and will likely not come anywhere close to their box office totals at the end of its worldwide run.