Well, we finally have an answer to the question we asked earlier this month (and have been asking intermittently for over a year now): in the case of Snow White, is all press good press? The answer, seemingly, is no. The controversial Disney remake finally opened this weekend to $43 million domestic and $87.3 million worldwide. That’s not exactly the true love Disney hoped would be shown to the film, despite all the drama. The Rachel Zegler-led feature cost the Mouse House $270 million to produce, per Deadline, which will be difficult to make much of a profit on at this rate. Maybe the movie would have fared better if the studio had spent a bit more of that budget making those CGI dwarves anything other than horrifying.
Snow White isn’t even close to being crowned as the fairest of Disney’s live-action remakes. Other princess features like The Little Mermaid, Maleficent, and Cinderella opened to $95.5 million, $69.4 million, and $67.8 million respectively, while Snow White is more on par with Dumbo, which opened to $46 million in 2019. But hey, look on the bright side: at least it did better than infamous flop Joker: Folie À Deux ($37.6M), per the trade. Yeah, there’s no real happy ending for Disney here.
It wasn’t a great weekend for Warner Bros. either. Two Robert De Niros couldn’t save The Alto Knights, which opened to a mere $3.1 million on its $50 million budget. That’s “arguably” not the Oscar winner’s lowest opening ever, per the trade. That honor goes to 1989’s We’re No Angels, which opened to $2 million unadjusted for inflation.
Unfortunately, this weekend was yet another poisoned apple for the box office overall. Check out this week’s top 10, courtesy of Box Office Mojo, below: