At a cost reportedly well over $200 million, box office projections offer the upcoming Rachel Zegler Snow White movie from Disney may bomb.
What are the estimates?
According to the latest estimates via THR, Snow White is tracking to open to $53 million. However, the low side of their tracking happens to be $48 million, and the high side is $58 million.
Tracking for Snow White seems to have gone down, as Box Office Pro just last week said the film was tracking for a $65M – $85M opening.
Similar to Mufasa? Cinderella?
Comparisons are being made to Mufasa: The Lion King, which had a similar budget, and only opened to $35.4M in December, yet want on to make $700M. Mufasa happened to be a sequel/prequel to The Lion King, which is huge, while Snow White you can argue hasn’t had anything really going for it since the original animated movie was released in 1937. Mufasa has legs. Does Rachel Zegler?
Comparisons are also being made to Disney’s live-action Cinderella movie released in 2015. However, what sites like THR are failing to tell you is that when inflation is factored in, Cinderella‘s $67.8M opening in today’s dollars is really closer to $100M — $90.87M. So Snow White looks to be tracking around half that number. Rachel Zegler is definitely going to need good legs.
Will the female audience show up?
Disney’s Snow White is obviously aimed at the female audience. Will they show up? They sure did for Barbie (guys did, too). Disney’s The Little Mermaid was so-so at a $569M worldwide box office but needed a reported $625 million to break even. They sure didn’t show up for The Marvels and Madame Web.
Rachel Zegler controversy
Rachel Zegler has also caused a lot of controversy, and I think that similar to actors like Brie Larson, a lot of women don’t like her. Zegler has also been vocal about her politics and even vocal how she didn’t like the 1937 original Snow White. She has since changed her tune, and reportedly Snow White went through major reshoots to change things.
“It’s very important for the public to know that Disney has found this beautiful and delicate balance between the animated classic that everyone knows and loves from 1937, and at the same time, introduces it to this new generation,” she said in a recent interview. “Her superpower is her heart.”
Zegler also hasn’t had a movie that opened over $50M and nobody watched her recent comedy sci-fi horror movie, Y2K, which only brought in $4.4M worldwide. Her Hunger Games movie only made $348M on a reported $100M budget, which is the lowest of the franchise coming in more than $300M less than the lowest grossing of the Jennifer Lawrence films.
Release info
Snow White opens March 21, 2025 and also stars Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen (who also has her own share of controversy). Marc Webb is the director.
