Walt Disney Studios has released the official teaser trailer for one of their most talked-about upcoming film, Snow White. The fantasy-musical now has an official release date as well, 21 March 2025.
While extensive press coverage and social media engagement typically work in favour of a new release, this is likely not going to be the case this time. This is evidenced by the reaction to the trailer as well. In the first two days since its upload, it has received 5.7 million views on YouTube, which is an impressive metric. However, it only received 57,000 likes so far, one for every 100 views, which is not stellar.
Also, since YouTube removed the visible dislike count, there is no easy way to gauge the disapproval of a piece of content on the site. However, it is telling that all the most upvoted comments are critical of the project. The most common critique is Disney’s choice of animating the dwarf characters instead of hiring actual dwarf actors, something actors with dwarfism have spoken out against.
The story behind that choice is quite interesting. After famous dwarf actor Peter Dinklage of Games of Thrones fame criticized the depiction of dwarfs in the original 1937 Disney film, the movie company decided to ditch the characters and replace them with a diverse group of ‘magical creatures’. However, after international backlash and mockery from fans on social media, Disney walked back on its creative choice, cut all scenes with the infamous magical creatures, and replaced them with animated dwarfs in post-production.
The most controversial casting choice by Disney was that of the main character, who, despite her name, will be played by Latina actress Rachel Zegler.
It fanned the flames of suspicions of anti-white sentiments in Hollywood. The Snow White story is an old European fairy tale, originally published in a Brothers Grimm book in 1812.
Furthermore, Zegler as a lead has tanked a film made from a recognizable franchise before. She starred in the 2021 feature film rendition of the famous Leonard Bernstein musical West Side Story, which ended up only grossing $76 million against a production budget of $100 million. However, she has somewhat quelled these concerns after taking the lead role in the 2023 movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, which did manage to turn a profit at the box office.
And Disney could really use some success at the box office.
In the last two years, Disney has incurred multiple hundred-million-dollar losses with its feature releases. The losing streak for ‘the House of the Mouse’ started with the June 2022 release of the Toy Story spinoff Lightyear, then followed by such flops as Strange World (2022), Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny (2023), Haunted Mansion (2023), and culminated with the biggest box office bombs of them all, Wish in November 2023.
Thus, there is a lot of pressure on Disney’s Snow White to perform well financially. But turning a profit has become increasingly difficult because of major post-production changes racking up expenses in the production budget, which is now estimated to be around $300 million.
The was originally slated to come out in March 2024. However, the slew of controversies surrounding it pushed back its release date to a year later, to 21 March 2025.
You can watch the official 2025 Disney Snow White teaser trailer below:
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