Disney’s Snow White remake made a lot of questionable choices, and many fans of the original film are wondering why the remake isn’t called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The 2025 live-action remake is an adaptation of the Disney classic, albeit with a much shorter тιтle. Snow White tells essentially the same story as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, while also using many of the same songs, characters, and pieces of iconography. Despite this, Disney still changed the тιтle from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Snow White, and here’s why.
The live-action Snow White remake has been one of Disney’s most controversial live-action remakes yet, for some good reasons and some bad ones. Many of the legitimate criticisms surrounding the film are valid, and while the remake suffers from many of the same issues as Disney’s other remakes, the fact that the original film came out in 1937 means that it doesn’t get the nostalgia boost that films like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King got. However, Snow White also underwent a lot of changes, with most of these being to the formerly тιтular Dwarves.
Disney Took A Different Approach To The Movie’s Dwarves
Since Controversy Plagued The Remake
Throughout the development of the Snow White remake, Disney’s approach to the Dwarves was one of the most controversial parts. It would have been incredibly difficult to not have the Seven Dwarfs, as they are essential to basically every version of the Snow White story. However, the 1937 film’s presentation of people with dwarfism is undoubtedly problematic, something that actor Peter Dinklage pointed out throughout the film’s development. Disney quickly announced that they would be taking a different approach to the Seven Dwarfs, although other actors with dwarfism said that these changes took away some of the few roles that people in the community were guaranteed to get.
Disney went through a variety of options for the Seven Dwarfs after these controversies began. At one point, Disney considered focusing on a band of seven human characters that only featured one person with dwarfism. Disney also considered simply focusing on seven magical creatures, although very few details are known about this option. Ultimately, Disney simply decided to recreate the animated Seven Dwarfs as CGI characters, staying faithful to their animated counterparts while de-emphasizing their human features and connection to real-life people with dwarfism.
Throughout 2025’s Snow White, the characters are simply referred to as “magical beings” rather than “dwarfs.” On top of that, the seven magical beings are also given some magical powers that aren’t present in the original animated film, with these abilities being connected to their mining occupation. While this final approach was still controversial, it is what Disney decided to go with. It would have been odd to call the remake Snow White and the Seven Magical Beings, so the тιтle dropped the latter half and simply went with Snow White.
Snow White’s тιтle Keeps The Focus On The Disney Princess
Following More Recent Disney тιтle Trends
Keeping the remake’s тιтle to simply Snow White also highlights that the remake wants to keep its focus on the Disney Princess. Snow White is a far more fleshed-out character in the remake than in the original film, and having her name be the sole focus of the тιтle emphasizes this. The new тιтle highlights the well-known part of the remake while dropping the controversial part, with it being easy to see how Disney thought that this was the best path forward for the 2025 film.
On top of that, this new тιтle also makes the film fall in line with Disney’s more recent naming conventions. Since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released, tons of Disney movies have come out that only feature the female protagonist’s name, such as Cinderella, Pocahontas, Mulan, and Moana. The only other film to feature the princess’ name and something else is Raya and the Last Dragon, which isn’t the most well-remembered Disney film. These reasons paint a clearer picture of why Disney went with the Snow White тιтle for its live-action remake.
