Will Snow White be a ‘victim of its moment’? How the Disney remake became 2025’s most divisive film

The live-action version of the classic fairy-tale animation sounded like a surefire hit. But even before it’s reached cinemas, the response to it has been loud and often hostile.

You wouldn’t think that the war in Gaza would have much impact on a Disney remake. But the live-action Snow White, a revamped version of the 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, has become a flashpoint for social and political divisions, even before its global release next week.  

There was some backlash to the casting of Rachel Zegler, of Colombian descent, as the heroine. More recently, there has been blowback both about Zegler’s pro-Palestinian comments and about pro-Israel comments by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who plays Snow White’s stepmother, the Evil Queen. And there is an ongoing debate about whether there should have been dwarfs at all, live or CGI. The film’s director, Marc Webb, said in Disney’s official production notes, “I think all good stories evolve over time. They become reflections of the world that we live in”. He has likely got more than he bargained for, as reactions to Snow White inadvertently reflect the most polarised aspects of the world today. Like political rhetoric in countries around the world, responses to the film’s production have been loud, irate and sometimes ugly.

Snow White has been in the works since 2019, and began in earnest with Zegler’s casting in 2021. Since then attacks on its so-called “wokeness” have proliferated, making the film a lightning rod for opinions that have little to do with the fairy tale it is based on. A recent Hollywood Reporter article asked, “Have some PR missteps combined with anti-woke outrage turned marketing the film into a poisoned apple?” And alongside such measured reporting there have been heated responses in the media. The editorial board of the New York Post – owned by Rupert Murdoch, the conservative mogul whose company also owns Fox News – weighed in this week, declaring the film a financial disaster before it has opened, writing: “Disney ‘Snow White’ controversy proves it again: Go woke, go broke!”

The original film needed an update if it was going to be remade at all. In its day it set a high bar for Disney’s future animated films, but it also introduced the song Someday My Prince Will Come, blighting the expectations of generations of girls by setting them up to wait for a Prince Charming to make their lives complete. Meanwhile, Snow White happily sweeps the floor for the dwarfs until he shows up to rescue her with a kiss after she bites the Queen’s poisoned apple. Soon after her casting announcement, Zegler told the television show Extra that in the old Snow White “there was a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her”. In fact, the original film states that he “searched far and wide” to find her after falling in love at first sight, and he disappears for most of the film, so no need to take that comment too seriously. Zegler was excited and laughing when she said it. But in an early sign of the blinkered reactions to come, social media posts complained that she was anti-love.

Some people also rejected the idea that a Latina actress could play a character called Snow White; alongside criticisms of such non-traditional casting, she was subject to racist trolling. This was a similar reaction to that experienced by the black actress Halle Bailey when she was cast as Ariel in 2023’s The Little Mermaid.

The film stumbled into more trouble simply because its lead actresses expressed political opinions. On X in August 2024, Zegler thanked fans for the response to the Snow White trailer, adding, “and always remember, free Palestine”.

Gadot has posted her support for Israel on social media, and especially since the 7 October attacks by Hamas has been outspoken in defence of her country and against anti-semitism. That led to some short-lived calls by pro-Palestinian social media users to boycott the film simply because she is in it.

The fallout on the film intensified after the 2024 US presidential election. Zegler posted on Instagram that she was “heartbroken” and fearful, and that she hoped “Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace”. In response Megyn Kelly, the former Fox news personality, attacked Zegler, saying on her radio show, “This woman is a pig,” and that Disney was going to have to recast the role. Zegler apologised to Trump voters, saying “I let my emotions get the best of me”.

Even when people reacting to the film have agreed on a basic principle, like more opportunities for actors who have dwarfism, they have disagreed on how to get there. Peter Dinklage, perhaps the world’s most well-known actor with dwarfism, questioned the entire project before many details were known, calling the 1937 film “a backwards story of seven dwarfs living in a cave together”. Disney announced the next day, “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters.”

As it turned out, the seven characters are CGI, and Disney has reclassifed them as “magical creatures”, not dwarfs. What do they look like? Even a glimpse at the trailer reveals that they look exactly like CGI dwarfs. They are still named Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc, Bashful and Dopey.

The changes have caused a backlash from some people with dwarfism, who have rebutted Dinklage and accused Disney of depriving them of acting roles. As recently as this week, one told the Daily Mail, “I think Disney is trying too hard to be politically correct, but in doing so it’s damaging our careers and opportunities.”

Amidst this swirl of controversies, Disney altered the traditional red-carpet treatment it would usually give such a major film. The premiere took place in Spain on 12 March, and the Los Angeles premiere is due to take place today at an unusual, afternoon hour. The regular red-carpet journalists have not been invited, even though as a group they are not known to ask hard-hitting questions.

Trying to avoid more political and social discord isn’t Disney’s only Snow White problem, though. There is much online speculation that the film might just be bad. The first full trailer was greeted with a rush of complaints about the underwhelming CGI, with The Guardian calling the trailer “the ugliest thing ever committed to screen”. The film has new songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the team behind La La Land, but the one released as a video, Waiting On a Wish, has a bland, generic Disney style. Box-office tracking predicts an opening weekend of around $50m (£39m), solid but at the low end for a would-be blockbuster that reportedly cost over $200m (£155m) to make.

Of course, given the Disney juggernaut – the recent Moana 2 has made more than $1bn (£773m) and Mufasa: The Lion King, which had a slow start, more than $712m (£550m) – the debacle leading up to Snow White’s opening may not hurt it at the box office at all.

Or the film may become the victim of its moment, a fairy-tale princess covered in mud. 

Snow White is released internationally on March 21