I swear I pay attention to industry gossip, and I knew that Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White was beset with various controversies, but I didn’t know that it had gotten THIS bad. How bad? Disney can’t even host a real premiere in Los Angeles, and they can’t have an open red carpet with wide press coverage. Instead, the March 15th premiere will be limited to still photographers, no TV/media outlets and an in-house Disney team trying to put a bow on this catastrophic exercise. Variety listed all of the issues which are plaguing this movie and it’s a lot. This makes Karla Sofia Gascon’s social-media mess look quaint.
Disney is hosting a Hollywood premiere of “Snow White” on March 15, but the studio won’t be rolling out a robust red carpet like it usually does. The afternoon festivities will include a pre-party and screening at the El Capitan Theatre with titular star Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen, expected to attend. However, the red carpet will not include the dozens of media outlets usually invited by Disney to interview the cast and creatives at its premieres. Instead, coverage will be limited to photographers and a house crew.
The studio did not comment for this story, but the scaled back plans come amid controversies surrounding the Marc Webb-directed film, which hits theaters March 21. Some toxic Disney fans questioned Snow White being played by Zegler when her casting was announced because she is a Latina actor. The “West Side Story” star also faced backlash when she called the 1937 original “dated” because the prince “literally stalks Snow White.”
Peter Dinklage spoke out about the movie’s portrayal of little people for perpetuating negative stereotypes. “Literally no offense to anything, but I was sort of taken aback,” he said on the “WTF With Mark Maron” podcast in January 2024. “They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there.” Shortly following Dinklage’s remarks, Disney said in a statement to “Good Morning America,” “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community.”
World politics have also come into play. Zegler has promoted “free Palestine” on social media. At the same time, Gadot, who is Israeli, has become an outspoken supporter of Israel on social media as well as in a passionate speech she delivered on March 4 when she was honored at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual summit in New York City. “Never did I imagine that on the streets of the United States, and different cities around the world, we would see people not condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying and cheering on a massacre of Jews,” she said, in part. Gadot has stayed away from politics in the past, but has said she felt she needed to speak up after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
In February, several dozen pro-Palestine protesters gathered outside the Hollywood premiere of “Captain America: Brave New World” and called for a boycott of the film over its inclusion of the Israeli superhero Ruth Bat-Seraph, aka Sabra, played by Israeli actress Shira Haas.
MAGA supporters also blasted Zegler for her reaction to Donald Trump’s reelection when she posted on Instagram, in part, “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” She apologized for her remarks two days later.
I knew most of the Zegler stuff – white supremacists are mad that a Latina was cast as Snow White, and those same white supremacists are unsurprisingly also pissed that Zegler thinks Donald Trump and his supporters are trash. I also knew about Peter Dinklage’s criticism and I still don’t really understand how Disney thought they could avoid a complete sh-tstorm by making this live-action adaptation and “keeping” those seven characters. As for a political beef between Gadot and Zegler… Disney made them present together at the Oscars, so both women can make the effort to play nice when it suits them (or when it suits Disney). I strongly suspect that it’s not about the alleged Zegler-Gadot beef – I think Disney is limiting the premiere access simply because they don’t want protesters out in force against Gadot specifically, like what happened at the Captain America premiere.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
