After poisonous PR, ‘Snow White’ has ‘heigh-ho’pes for a fairy tale ending at the box office

Remaking Disney’s first animated movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was always going to be controversial, but Disney’s new live-action retelling of the 1937 film may just whistle its way to box office success.

Remaking Disney’s first animated movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was always going to be controversial, but Disney’s new live-action retelling of the 1937 film may just whistle its way to box office success. The original film’s creator Walt Disney was lauded for his “monumental innovation” in creating the first-ever feature-length animated film at the time of its release, with The Hollywood Reporter pronouncing at the time that Disney had “carved for himself a permanent niche in the motion picture hall of fame” – a truly premonitive observation. The new “Snow White,” out on Friday, however, isn’t so much of a monumental innovation, at least technically speaking, given this is one of many live-action remakes that Disney Studios has released in recent years. But, with early glowing reviews for the film’s star Rachel Zegler and descriptions like “visual feast” and one of Disney’s “best live-action remakes in years” to describe this updated cinematic retelling, the film may very well wind up overcoming a rollout that has been plagued with PR issues. “Snow White” stars Zegler and Gal Gadot – along with those seven fictional characters Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc and Happy – have been caught in several cultural controversies along the way, making the positive first reactions to the film likely a welcome relief to the House of Mouse. Zegler, who plays the film’s titular princess, was met with racist trolling from internet users who questioned why an actress of Colombian descent is playing a character celebrated for having “skin as white as snow” when her casting was announced. “At one point, you just have to shut it all off and think, if I’m not going to read the bad, I’m just not going to read the good either,” she said in 2022, responding to the criticism. “I’m just going to believe in what I believe in.”