‘Snow White’ Live-Action Remake Lost Disney A Hefty $170M

Last year, Disney released a live-action version of the beloved animated fairytale film “Snow White,” helmed by Marc Webb (“The Amazing Spider-Man,” “500 Days of Summer”), which didn’t exactly fare well with critics or audiences. Despite the film making $205.6 million at the box office, it wasn’t enough to push the movie into the profit range.

via: Forbes

The dark spell cast on Disney's bottom line by last year's live action version of Snow White has been revealed in filings which show that the movie "was forecasted to be over the production budget" with costs of $336.5 million (£271.1 million).

Comfortably one of the most controversial films in Disney's history, Snow White starred Rachel Zegler in the title role alongside Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.

No sooner had the cameras started rolling in 2022 than Zegler slammed the story in the 1937 animated classic that the film is based on. She likened the heroic Prince Charming’s behaviour to that of a "stalker" and described the cartoon as "extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power". It disenchanted critics including David Hand, whose father worked on the original which won Walt Disney an honorary Oscar. Hand said that the duo "would be turning in their graves" as it was made "with good taste."

The criticism intensified when Snow White's computer-generated dwarfs debuted in the first trailer for the movie and were described by critics as being creepy copies of the cute and cuddly characters in the original cartoon. It led to the trailer becoming one of the most hated videos on YouTube with more than a million dislikes.

Even more dark clouds gathered when Zegler took to social media to thank fans for watching the trailer and added "always remember, free palestine." The comment eventually came to the attention of the film’s producer Marc Platt and, according to Variety, he flew to New York in a bid to get Zegler to take the post down but she refused which is why it remains online to this day.

Zegler didn't stop there as she launched an expletive-laden tirade against MAGA supporters and President Trump following his election for a second term. Wary of the impact on his production, Platt reportedly tried again to get Zegler to keep the peace but it was too late.

The film failed to cast a spell on audiences with worldwide takings of just $87.3 million in its opening weekend, 13% less than forecast. It went on to earn a total of just $205.7 million making it the fifth-lowest grossing of the 21 live action theatrical adaptations of Disney cartoons.

The only movies behind it were Mulan, 102 Dalmatians, Christopher Robin and the 1994 version of The Jungle Book. Mulan was released during the pandemic while 102 Dalmatians grossed $183.6 million in 2000 which exceeds Snow White as it comes to $343.3 million in today's money. The same goes for the $253.5 million inflation-adjusted gross for 2018's Christopher Robin. You have to go all the way back to 1994's The Jungle Book to find a Disney live action remake that had lower takings than Snow White and wasn't released during a global crisis.

However, the low takings alone aren't what made Snow White's performance so disenchanting. Despite being a bust at the box office, it had a blockbuster cost and there's no doubt about that.

The cost of movies made in the United States is usually a closely-guarded secret as studios combine their spending on all of them in their filings and don't break them out individually. In contrast, movies made in the United Kingdom are an exception and Snow White was one of them. A lucrative fiscal incentive has made the U.K. a hub for Hollywood film-makers and shines a spotlight on the cost of the movies shot there.

Studios filming in the U.K. benefit from the government's Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit which gives them a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country. It comes with a catch.

To qualify for the reimbursement, at least 10% of the core costs of the production need to relate to activities in the U.K. and in order to demonstrate this to the government, studios set up a separate Film Production Company (FPC) there for each picture. The FPCs have to file legally binding financial statements which reveal everything from the headcount and social security payments of the staff to the amount of reimbursement banked by the studio and the total cost of the production. It takes a bit of detective work to get to the bottom of it.

The FPCs usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when filing permits to film on location. Tallying the code names with the productions they are responsible for requires deep industry knowledge which my colleague and I have built up over nearly 15 years of reporting. We are the only journalists worldwide who specialize in covering the financial statements of U.K. film production companies for national media and we have reported on them for more than 10 leading titles including The Times of London, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and the London Evening Standard.

Once the code name has been correctly tallied with the film, the financial statements of the relevant FPC can be consulted to reveal how much the movie cost to make. That’s because the terms of the reimbursement state that each FPC must be "responsible for pre-production, principal photography/shooting and post-production of the film; and for delivery of the completed film." In summary, the FPC's financial statements have to show the production's entire costs, not just those incurred in the U.K. Studios aren't allowed to hide costs in other companies as the terms also state "there can only be one FPC in relation to a film."

The Disney subsidiary behind Snow White is called Hidden Heart Productions in a nod to the shape of the latch on the Evil Queen's jewelry box in the animated original. The financial statements are filed in stages which starts during pre-production and goes on long after the premiere to give the company time to ensure it has collected all of its bills and received the money for them.

In 2023 this author revealed in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper that by July 31, 2022 Disney had already spent a staggering $183.3 million on making Snow White even though principal photography had only just wrapped.

The latest set of filings are for the year to December 31, 2024 which was less than three months before the movie debuted so should give an almost-complete picture of its costs. The $336.5 million spent on Snow White is higher than the cost of Disney's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, its Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel movie and its live action version of Beauty and the Beast which grossed a staggering $1.3 billion in 2017.

Impressively, the cost of Snow White is right in line with the 2023 estimate from expert film industry pundit Valliant Renegade who forecast that "Disney's Snow White remake cost $300m." Unlike some observers, his estimate wasn't wildly high or low, it was conservative and that served him well as the costs shown in the filings round down to the precise prediction he made two years before the movie was released.

It is also crucial that he refers to the film's costs rather than its budget or net expenses which other observers often wrongly use interchangeably. The budget is the amount that Disney initially allocated to spend on the production internally. Early into production a fire ravaged the Snow White set at Pinewood Studios and it later underwent extensive reshoots so it's no surprise that the film blew its budget. However, it doesn't stop there.

The U.K. government also gave Snow White a magic touch as it reimbursed $64.9 million (£52.3 million) of the movie's costs. This brought its net expenses down to $271.6 million but even that wasn't enough to give it a happy ending in theaters.

The amount that theaters pay to studios is known in the trade as a rental fee and an indication of the typical level comes from film industry consultant Stephen Follows who interviewed 1,235 film professionals in 2014 and concluded that, according to studios, theaters keep 49% of the takings on average.

This research lends weight to the widely-established 50-50 split which would give Disney just $102.9 million from Snow White yielding a $168.7 million loss at the box office after deducting the $271.6 million net spending on the movie.

The share of the box office isn’t the studio’s only return from a movie so offsetting it from the costs in the financial statements does not show whether it made a profit or a loss overall. As a Disney spokesperson told me in 2023, "there will be other income generated by the production (such as DVD/Blu Ray sales, merchandising, etc.). It’s not reflecting a true account of whether the film was overall profitable."

However, just as the production generates other income, it also incurs other costs, chief of which are the marketing expenses, which aren't shown in the FPC's financial statements as they are just for the company which produces the movie. Accordingly, if the home entertainment and merchandise sales should be added to the theater takings, the marketing cost should be deducted from them. This makes it less likely that Snow White turned a profit though it casts a cloud of uncertainty over its actual bottom line.

What is for certain is that it hasn't put Disney off spending big bucks on movies. That is clear from its first quarter 2026 results which showed that the operating income of its entertainment division fell 35% to $1.1 billion partly due to an "increase in programming and production costs." There is good reason that Disney hasn't scaled back on spending. Its next movie after Snow White was Lilo & Stitch and although this was another remake of a classic cartoon it earned $1 billion at the box office. This made it the fourth-highest grossing adaptation of an animated Disney film but that's not all. It also went a long way to wiping out Snow White's losses and proved that the genre can still be a dream ticket.