Last October, Disney decided to delay the release of its controversial live-action “Snow White” by nearly a year. It is now set to open on March 21, 2025. A trailer has finally been released by Disney at their annual D23 convention.
Disney’s original plan was to nix the iconic dwarfs of the original and replace them with characters rumored to be “magical creatures” — played by normal sized actors. After much backlash, the company reversed this creative decision and decided to include CGI Dwarfs into the film.
Principal photography on “Snow White” began on March 7, 2022, and wrapped in June 2022. So, next year’s release will have been almost three years after production wrapped up in London.
However, reshoots were done on the film in June 2023. The goal was to insert flashbacks into “Snow White,” featuring actress Emilia Faucher as a younger version of Snow White. Another round of reshoots occurred earlier this summer in London. This was confirmed by Gal Gadot who stars in the film as the Evil Queen. Rachel Zegler, who plays Snow White, was also in London for the additional photography.
According to Forbes, Disney spent $209M to produce this upcoming live action “Snow White”. A few months later, The Daily Mail (not the most reliable source, mind you) reported that figure to actually be $330 million. We’ll have a better estimate of the budget soon.
“Snow White” was written by none other than Greta Gerwig and is being directed by Marc Webb (“500 Days of Summer”). It stars Zegler, Gadot, Andrew Burnap, Ansu Kabia, Dujonna Gift and Martin Klebba.
In 2023, Zegler received pushback for comments in which she called the animated classic “weird” and described Prince Charming as a “stalker.” Last year, she also referred to the upcoming remake as the “PC Snow White.”
The original 1937 film was directed by a few animators, one of whom was the late David Hand. Hand’s son, also named David, called this reimagining of his dad’s film a “disgrace,” and that Walt Disney and his dad would be “turning in their graves” if they were alive to see the new version.