Snow White’s sleepy start at US box office buoyed by Republican voters
Dogged by politically inspired controversy for months, Disney’s new version of Snow White recorded a disappointing $43m (£33.3m) on its first weekend at the North American box office, the lowest figures to date for one of the studio’s recent wave of live-action remakes of its classic animated films. However, despite the stream of criticism over its so-called “woke” credentials, figures reveal that it is proportionally more successful in “red” states that vote Republican than those voting Democrat.
Overall, Snow White’s figures are well down on what Disney may have hoped for; the previously worst performing remake was the Tim Burton-directed Dumbo, which took $45m on its opening weekend in 2019, and finished with a worldwide box-office take of $353m. In contrast, remade films such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King all took over $1bn worldwide.
Snow White’s chances of profitability are further hampered by the size of its production budget, a rumoured $270m after extensive reshoots – compared to Dumbo’s $170m, Lion King’s $260m, and Aladdin’s $183m.
However, assumptions that the rows over alterations from the original animation – including casting a part-Hispanic performer, Rachel Zegler, in the title role, replacing dwarf actors with CGI, and downplaying the prince’s role in the action – as well as outspoken political statements by Zegler criticising Donald Trump and expressing support for Palestinians, have led to the mediocre results, are not borne out by analysis of US box-office returns. A report in Deadline suggests that ticket sales and attendance overperformed in Republican voting counties in comparison to standard revenue patterns. Because of the preponderance of cinemas in Democrat-supporting urban areas, a family-oriented movie would expect 63% of its sales from “blue” counties and 37% from “red”. However, in Snow White’s case, the balance was tilted towards Republican counties, which accounted for 40% of ticket sales.
Box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore said in Variety that family audiences were not likely to have paid much attention to the rows, and it was not likely to have been a significant factor. “In the case of Snow White, kids and families likely just wanted to see a PG film and [were] perhaps unaware of the controversies.”
The film also performed disappointingly in international markets, falling short of its $50m forecast to accumulate $44.3m, after releasing in a swathe of countries including France, China and the UK.
Box-office analyst David A Gross of FranchiseRe told Variety that Disney will be hoping for a long tail and a gradual accumulation of interest. “It’s a soft opening by Disney’s historic standard. Success will depend on whether the film plays well for a couple of months like Mufasa recently did.” Mufasa: The Lion King started even more poorly than Snow White, with an opening North American weekend of $35m in December 2024, but went on to gross $718m worldwide.
The same weekend also saw spectacularly bad figures for The Alto Knights, a period gangster film with Robert De Niro in a double role. Costing around $45m to make, The Alto Knights came in sixth, taking $3.2m from 2,800 venues.
