When Walt Disney released the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, it was a gamble that paid off spectacularly, becoming the highest-grossing sound film of its era and cementing the studio’s place in entertainment history. Nearly nine decades later, Disney’s attempt to revisit that magic with a live-action reimagining has produced the opposite result — a financial disaster of staggering proportions that has sent shockwaves through Hollywood and raised uncomfortable questions about the studio’s creative direction.

Disney’s live-action Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, has lost the company approximately $170 million, according to figures revealed during the studio’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call. The film, which was released in March 2025, grossed roughly $230 million worldwide at the box office — a figure that might sound respectable in isolation but is catastrophic when measured against the film’s bloated production and marketing costs. As reported by Fox Business, the loss makes Snow White one of the most expensive box office failures in Disney’s modern history.

A Budget That Ballooned Beyond Control

The financial autopsy of Snow White reveals a production that spiraled far beyond its original financial parameters. According to Forbes, the film significantly blew past its initial budget during a troubled production process. What was originally conceived as another entry in Disney’s lucrative live-action remake pipeline — the same strategy that had yielded billion-dollar hits like Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Lion King (2019) — instead became a cautionary tale about runaway costs and misread audience appetites.

The production budget reportedly climbed to approximately $270 million, a figure that placed enormous pressure on the film’s theatrical performance before a single ticket was sold. When factoring in global marketing and distribution costs — which for a tentpole Disney release can easily add another $100 million to $150 million — the total investment likely approached or exceeded $400 million. Under the standard industry rule of thumb that a film needs to gross roughly 2.5 times its production budget to break even at the box office, Snow White would have needed to earn somewhere north of $675 million globally. Its $230 million haul fell devastatingly short of that threshold.

Controversy Before the Cameras Even Stopped Rolling

The financial failure did not occur in a vacuum. Long before Snow White reached theaters, it was engulfed in a series of public relations crises that eroded audience goodwill and turned the film into a cultural flashpoint. As noted by Dark Horizons, the production was dogged by controversy from its earliest stages, much of it centered on comments made by its lead actress, Rachel Zegler, and creative decisions that alienated significant portions of the target audience.

Zegler, who won acclaim for her role in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, made a series of remarks during the film’s promotional cycle that proved deeply polarizing. She publicly criticized elements of the original 1937 animated classic, including the Prince’s role and the romantic storyline, comments that were widely interpreted as dismissive of the beloved source material. The backlash was swift and sustained, particularly on social media platforms, where the film became a lightning rod in broader cultural debates about Hollywood’s approach to reimagining classic intellectual property. According to reporting by IMDb, the pre-release negativity created a headwind that the film’s marketing team was never able to fully overcome.

Disney’s CFO Addresses the Damage

During Disney’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston directly addressed the Snow White losses, providing a rare moment of corporate candor about a high-profile misfire. Johnston acknowledged that the film had a “ichael negative impact” on the studio entertainment segment’s results and confirmed that the picture had exceeded its production budget. The admission was notable for its frankness; major studios typically prefer to let box office disappointments fade quietly rather than quantify losses on earnings calls.

Johnston’s comments, as reported by Forbes, indicated that Disney’s leadership had taken the lesson seriously. The CFO suggested that the company was implementing tighter cost controls on future productions and re-evaluating its approach to the live-action remake strategy that has been a cornerstone of Disney’s theatrical slate for the past decade. The $170 million loss figure, while staggering, represents just one component of a broader reckoning at the studio about how it develops, budgets, and markets its tentpole releases.

The Live-Action Remake Formula Shows Cracks

For much of the past decade, Disney’s strategy of remaking its animated classics as live-action or photorealistic CGI films seemed like an unassailable business model. Beauty and the Beast grossed $1.26 billion worldwide. Aladdin (2019) earned over $1 billion. The Lion King brought in $1.66 billion. Even more modestly performing entries like Cinderella (2015) and The Jungle Book (2016) were solidly profitable. The formula appeared simple: take a property with built-in global recognition, add contemporary visual effects and star power, and watch the returns roll in.

But cracks in this model had been appearing before Snow White. The Little Mermaid (2023), while grossing $569 million globally, was considered an underperformer relative to its budget and the franchise’s cultural footprint. Pinocchio (2022) was diverted to Disney+ entirely, bypassing theaters. Snow White‘s collapse suggests that audience fatigue with the remake formula may have reached a critical tipping point, particularly when combined with creative choices that alienate rather than embrace the nostalgia that drives ticket sales for these properties. As Dark Horizons noted, the film’s failure raises serious questions about whether Disney can continue to mine its animation vault with the same commercial confidence.

The Human Cost and Industry Ripple Effects

Beyond the balance sheet, the Snow White debacle carries significant implications for the careers and reputations of those involved. Director Marc Webb, who previously helmed (500) Days of Summer and two Amazing Spider-Man films, faces the difficult reality that a $170 million loss will inevitably affect his standing in an industry where directors are only as bankable as their last opening weekend. For Zegler, whose public comments became inseparable from the film’s troubled narrative, the situation is more complex — she remains a talented performer with an Oscar-worthy debut behind her, but the Snow White experience has demonstrated the perils of a promotional strategy that appears to work against a film’s commercial interests.

The ripple effects extend throughout Disney’s pipeline. The studio has several live-action remakes in various stages of development, and the Snow White loss will inevitably subject each of them to heightened scrutiny. Budget approvals will face greater resistance from financial executives now armed with a $170 million cautionary example. Marketing strategies will be more carefully calibrated to avoid the kind of pre-release controversies that plagued this production. And creative teams will face the delicate challenge of modernizing classic stories without alienating the audiences whose nostalgia is the primary commercial asset.

Wall Street’s View of the Magic Kingdom

For Disney investors, the Snow White loss is a significant but not existential concern. The Walt Disney Company is a diversified entertainment conglomerate with theme parks, streaming platforms, television networks, and consumer products divisions that can absorb a single theatrical misfire, however large. Disney’s stock has remained relatively stable, buoyed by stronger performance in its parks and experiences division and continued subscriber growth at Disney+. However, the studio entertainment segment’s results were materially impacted by the write-down, and analysts have noted that Disney cannot afford to repeat this kind of loss with regularity.

The broader context matters as well. Hollywood is navigating a period of significant disruption, with theatrical attendance patterns still normalizing after the pandemic, streaming economics still maturing, and audience tastes shifting in ways that make even the most established franchises less predictable. According to Fox Business, the Snow White failure is part of a pattern of high-profile theatrical disappointments across multiple studios, suggesting that the problem is not unique to Disney but is symptomatic of an industry struggling to calibrate its spending against increasingly uncertain returns.

Lessons from a Fairy Tale Gone Wrong

The story of Disney’s Snow White remake is ultimately a story about the limits of brand power and the dangers of creative complacency. Disney’s animated library represents one of the most valuable intellectual property portfolios in entertainment history, but the Snow White experience demonstrates that even the most recognizable brands are not immune to audience rejection when the execution fails to meet expectations — or when the surrounding discourse actively discourages attendance.

The $170 million loss also underscores a fundamental tension in Disney’s current strategy. The company’s live-action remakes have always walked a tightrope between honoring the originals and justifying their own existence. The most successful entries — Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book — managed to feel both familiar and fresh. Snow White, by contrast, became defined by what it was changing rather than what it was celebrating, and the result was a film that satisfied neither traditionalists nor those seeking something genuinely new.

As Disney regroups and looks ahead to its next slate of releases, the lesson of Snow White will loom large. In the fairy tale, the poisoned apple is eventually overcome, and the princess awakens to a happy ending. Whether Disney’s live-action remake strategy can achieve a similar revival remains an open and increasingly urgent question for the studio, its shareholders, and an industry watching closely to see what the Magic Kingdom does next.