‘Snow White’ opens with a sleepy $43 million at box office

The live-action version of Snow White, produced by Walt Disney Co., debuted in theaters with a disappointing $43 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

With a production budget exceeding $250 million, Snow White had grand aspirations, especially considering it marks Disney’s return to its roots. The 1937 animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Disney’s first feature film and played a pivotal role in financing the company’s Burbank studio lot.

However, this new adaptation struggled to achieve success. Leading up to the film’s release, it was overshadowed by controversies, including criticisms about how the dwarfs were portrayed through CGI and backlash against remarks made by lead actress Rachel Zegler. These issues led Disney to scale back its premiere.

Additionally, poor reviews hurt the film’s reception. Critics weren’t impressed, with the movie receiving just 43% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

The box-office results for Disney’s live-action remakes have varied widely, but Snow White may represent a new low point. While Jon Favreau’s photorealistic The Lion King (2019) didn’t receive great reviews, it went on to earn over $1.6 billion globally. In comparison, Snow White had a weaker opening, making less than Dumbo‘s $46 million debut in 2019 and falling far short of Cinderella‘s $67.9 million opening in 2015.

Internationally, Snow White earned an additional $44.3 million, bringing its global total to $87.3 million. However, before the weekend, the film had been projected to hit around $100 million worldwide, and just a few weeks earlier, expectations were even higher.

This underwhelming performance is likely to fuel further doubts about Disney’s ongoing strategy of remaking its classic animated films into live-action versions. Future projects include new adaptations of Moana and Tangled, as well as a live-action Lilo & Stitch, which is set to debut in May.

Efforts to update Snow White quickly faced criticism. In 2022, actor Peter Dinklage spoke out against the remake, calling the plans “backward.” In response, Disney decided to remove “and the Seven Dwarfs” from the title and opted to animate the dwarfs instead. The casting of Rachel Zegler also sparked backlash from some right-wing commentators, who labeled the film as overly “woke.” Delays and reshoots further increased the film’s production costs.

Despite this, Disney has successfully turned a number of films with modest beginnings into box-office successes. For example, Mufasa: The Lion King, directed by Barry Jenkins, opened with $35.4 million domestically but eventually earned over $717 million worldwide. Snow White should face minimal competition in the upcoming weeks, and audiences gave it a “B+” rating on CinemaScore.

In contrast, Warner Bros. faced disappointment with Alto Knights, a period gangster film starring Robert De Niro in dual roles. Directed by Barry Levinson, the film, which had a production budget of around $45 million, opened to a mere $3.2 million from 2,651 theaters. This flop followed another Warner Bros. misfire, Mickey 17, a sci-fi film directed by Bong Joon Ho, which has earned just $40.2 million domestically after three weeks, against a $118 million budget.

Magazine Dreams, starring Jonathan Majors as a troubled aspiring bodybuilder, opened to a weak $700,000 across 815 locations for Briarcliff Entertainment. The film was dropped by Searchlight Pictures after Majors was convicted on two misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment related to his ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. Majors avoided jail time but was sentenced to a year of probation.

The disappointing weekend added to a challenging 2025 for Hollywood. According to data from Comscore, the box office is down 6.9% compared to last year and 38.6% compared to 2019.

Top 10 Movies by Domestic Box Office
With final domestic figures expected Monday, here are the top 10 films based on ticket sales from Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore: