Not content with the new Snow White bombing in March, Disney decided to release it again in the US last week, only for it to bomb even worse than the first time and take just $252 per screen. The Telegraph‘s Ed Power has more.
Hi-ho, it’s back to the cinema for Disney’s flop live-action Snow White. Having originally crashed and burned in March, the movie misfired all over again after the House of Mouse re-released it in the US last week. Talk about putting the ‘grim’ in Grimm Fairy Tale.
Disney’s apparent calculation was that that the advent of summer blockbuster season could give this dead-on-arrival feature a new lease of life. You can sort of appreciate the logic: after all, May saw the ailing Marvel Cinematic Universe return from purgatory when Thunderbolts proved a surprise hit.
Where a caped crusader can go, surely Snow White and her terrifying CGI dwarf friends could follow? Who, moreover, wouldn’t want to hear Gal Gadot ham her way through the dreadful ‘All Is Fair’ one last time? A sort of evil twin of Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’, the tune has acquired a cult fanbase on social media, where people are intoxicated by its sheer ‘how did this get made?’ awfulness.
Sadly for Disney, such logic did not long survive contact with reality. Incredibly, the second coming of Snow White was an even bigger disaster than the original run. Unleashed on an unsuspecting 1,000 cinemas across the US, the Rachel Zegler v Gal Gadot calamity brought in a pitiful $252 per screen. To date, the remake has cost Disney an estimated $115 million – much of the cost eaten up for by the bizarre decision to have Zegler act opposite CGI dwarfs straight from the Uncanny Valley.
The studio will no doubt claw back some of that cash when Snow White is released to video streaming this month. But if the film is about to be made available at home, why put it back in cinemas? It’s the most illogical re-release since Sony tried to capitalise on the mockery directed at its dire Jared Leto superhero bust Morbius by putting it back in cinemas in June 2022 – when it did almost as badly as Snow White, bringing in $289 “per theatre”.
Worth reading in full.
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