Over the past decade Disney has made a fortune from giving its classic films a modern makeover, with fresh takes on Aladdin, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast all grossing more than a billion dollars at the box office.
And yet far from a fairytale, last month’s release of Snow White — a remake of perhaps the company’s most beloved animated feature — was a disaster and by some estimates, the film could lose $115 million.
The studio — and the rest of Hollywood — will be sifting through the wreckage for any lessons to be learnt from what was ultimately a poisoned apple.
“This was a perfect storm,” Jonathan Kuntz, a film historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, noting the various controversies that dogged Snow White.
The film’s failure already appears to be having repercussions for Disney. On Thursday the Hollywood Reporter said that the studio was pausing work on its live-action remake of Tangled, the 2010 animated fairytale retelling of Rapunzel.
The news suggests Disney is rethinking its wider remake strategy due to signs that audiences are growing tired of familiar material.
Kuntz said Snow White’s fate came down to the unwelcome headlines that clung to the film, which has so far grossed a disappointing $145 million.
Rachel Zegler, who played the lead role, disparaged the 1937 original film and said the prince “literally stalks” the princess, which angered Disney purists.
The 23-year-old also commented on the war in Gaza and voiced her support for the Palestinian cause, which was reported to have resulted in a Snow White producer flying to New York for face-to-face talks with the actress.
Gal Gadot, who played the Evil Queen, served in the Israel Defence Forces, which led to speculation of tensions between the lead actresses.
Then there was the muddled creative choices over the dwarves, with Disney seeming unsure how to adapt them for contemporary tastes.
Peter Dinklage, the actor best known for his role in Game of Thrones, has dwarfism and said that depicting them in a modern retelling was “backwards”.
Disney ultimately decided to use CGI to animate the dwarfs, which provoked anger from actors with dwarfism, who complained they had missed out on job opportunities.
Kuntz said: “The dwarfs became a liability.” He added that having a stronger creative vision might have offset the problem.
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Kuntz believed that the film was hamstrung from the very beginning as it was a nakedly commercial enterprise, unlike the original, which was the result of the creative brilliance of Walt Disney himself.
Without a similar artistic spirit guiding the remake, adapting a classic film from almost a century ago was always likely to struggle in an era of unending culture wars, Kuntz said.
“We have such a divided world, a divided country, a divided audience that if you want to please half of them you’re going to make the other half angry,” he said.
Arguably, Zegler’s outspokenness was Snow White’s biggest problem.
Some have claimed Disney should have exerted greater control over her, but Kuntz believed this to be unrealistic.
“In the 1930s and even in the 1990s, studios were able to control what came out, the publicity was tightly managed,” he said. “But you can’t do that in the 21st century, not with social media and the access everybody has.”
In searching for an explanation for Snow White’s failure, analysts have criticised Disney’s casting choices, creative decisions and even marketing strategy — the studio scaled back the Hollywood premiere to avoid journalists, according to reports.
However, Andi Stein, a Disney expert and professor at California State University, Fullerton, said the company’s live-action adaptation strategy was now tired.
“Disney just keeps trying to recycle its old material and hoping that audiences will bite,” Stein said, adding that remaking the beloved Snow White was an inherently risky venture.
“Sometimes Disney has gone overboard with not having original content and that may be what viewers are getting tired of.”
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A fresh approach was needed, Stein added, and the company should have considered abandoning the remake of its classics.
“It’s time to stop focusing so much on how we can make money easily and think more about what we can provide to our audiences that’s going to be fresh and interesting and exciting to make people want to go to the movies again,” she said.
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Kuntz believed the debacle could not be explained without considering Disney’s political entanglements of the past decade.
The studio has been widely criticised by conservatives for the diversity of its casting and for including LGBT characters into films and television shows, with accusations it had attempted to spread a left-wing political agenda.
Kuntz said: “Disney in the 21st century has been at the forefront of foregrounding race and gender issues and pushing a political agenda.
“So in some ways, you might say they got their comeuppance here, because it turns out that if you have a political agenda you are going to inevitably alienate half the audience.”
