‘Snow White’ box office more sleepy than happy

Disney’s “Snow White,” a big-budget live-action retelling of the classic fairytale, opened to a sleepy $43 million at the domestic box office this weekend amid a slew of controversies.

Disney’s “Snow White,” a big-budget live-action retelling of the classic fairytale, opened to a sleepy $43 million at the domestic box office this weekend amid a slew of controversies. Early industry estimates predicted “Snow White,” which cost around $270 million to make, would take in $48-$58 million in its first weekend. Despite falling short of expectations, “Snow White” surpassed Focus Features’ “Black Bag” ($4.4 million) and Disney’s “Captain America: Brave New World” ($4.1 million), and could see steady growth in the weeks ahead, according to industry analysts. “It’s a Disney film. It settles in, there’s not going to be a lot of family competition,” said David A. Gross, who runs movie consultancy FranchiseRe. “This weekend is the locomotive that pulls the train.” Though the remake of Disney’s 1937 classic topped the box office, it fell well short in comparison to Disney’s “Cinderella,” which was released about a decade ago on March 13, 2015. The controversy-free “Cinderella” grossed $91.8 million in its opening weekend against a $138.3 million budget, both figures adjusted for inflation. But the Disney princess genre has had varying levels of success, said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian, in part because of shifting box office interest and the over-saturation of remakes. “There may be a bit of fatigue on these live-action remakes of classic animated films,” he said. It also didn’t help that “Snow White” garnered attention for all of the wrong reasons ahead of its release. The musical and children’s movie somehow found itself in the crosshairs of a culture war over the titular casting of Rachel Zegler, an American actor of Colombian descent, as well as the Israel-Hamas war with the casting of Gal Gadot, who had a mandated service in the Israeli army, as the “Evil Queen.” Then there was the reimagining of the Seven Dwarfs as magical creatures, drawing criticism from “Game of Thrones” actor Peter Dinklage.