How to Throw Snow White Under a Bus

A look at Variety’s shameful feature blaming Rachel Zegler for Disney's failures.

Disney’s $270 million Snow White remake flopped at the box office this past weekend, only earning $43 million. That’s less than the studio’s previous low mark, which was $45 million for Tim Burton’s Dumbo in 2019. A level-headed approach would look at these two numbers and conclude that while these are remakes of animated classics, they don’t conjure the same feelings of nostalgia as Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. As a friend on BlueSky joked, those movies are for people who remember the ‘90s while Snow White is nostalgic for people in their 90’s.

Concluding that Snow White was simply too old of a title to remake would be the sensible thing to do. Disney and the film’s producers chose a different tact.

A couple days ago, Variety published a despicable hit piece laying the blame for the film’s failure at the feet of its star, Rachel Zegler. The article begins:

On Aug. 12, 2024, three days after Rachel Zegler hit the stage at Disney’s D23 fan event to introduce the first official trailer of “Snow White,” she thanked supporters effusively in an X post for driving the teaser to 120 million views in 24 hours. One minute later, she added an afterthought in the same thread: “and always remember, free palestine.”

That addendum, which amassed 8.8 million views, nearly four times the number for the initial post, quickly made the rounds, with many inside the studio expressing shock that the “Snow White” star would commingle the promotion of its $270 million tentpole with any kind of political statement. A Disney executive raised the studio’s concerns with Zegler’s team, while the film’s producer Marc Platt flew to New York to speak directly with her. But the actress, whose relationship with the studio began to unravel in 2022 during a contentious “West Side Story” awards season campaign and continued as she trashed the beloved original “Snow White,” stood her ground, and the post remained. Behind the scenes, death threats toward Zegler’s co-star Gal Gadot, who is Israeli, spiked, and Disney had to pay for additional security for the mother of four.

“She didn’t understand the repercussions of her actions as far as what that meant for the film, for Gal, for anyone,” says one insider.

First, saying “free Palestine,” should not be all that controversial at this point given how many Palestinians have died in the war. A “free” Palestine does not inherently mean a doomed Israel. It is a fairly benign call for people to not be killed by an aggressive neighboring power seeking to assert itself after a massive intelligence failure.

The studio was “shocked” that Zegler made a political statement, which is bizarre because I’m inclined to believe that part of their pitch to her on this Snow White remake was that this was an “empowered” version of the character and one who’s not afraid to speak her mind. I suppose that’s all well and good for the press tour, but there’s a marketing plan, Rachel! Now be a good little pitch bot and let us leverage your massive social media following.

Furthermore, to say Zegler “trashed” the original Snow White is a bit much. She said the original was outdated, which is fair, but more importantly, the remake agrees! That’s why it makes narrative digressions and additions! If the idea was that the original was perfect and no one should criticize it, then why bother with any updates to the material?

The article then gets particularly venomous, implying that Zegler’s “free Palestine” comment caused death threats to be directed at her Israeli co-star Gal Gadot and required added security. The article can’t prove this, and it’s gross to imply that Zegler is somehow responsible for online crazies threatening an Israeli woman. Again, Variety has no hard evidence, but it lets the implication linger that a young actor was too vocal about her politics and thoughtlessly endangered not only her co-worker but her co-worker’s children.

Rachel Zegler as Snow White in Snow White | Image via Disney