Mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s essentially the most cursed movie of all? In 2025, at the least, the reply could be Snow White. Disney’s $270 million musical remake of the animated basic, starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, is ready to premiere on March 21—however it’s already been making headlines for 3 years. From MAGA backlash to ableism discourse to reported rigidity between its two stars, Snow White has been suffering from sufficient controversy to drive anybody to a poisoned apple. Here’s a timeline of every thing that Snow White has needed to endure on its tough journey to the massive display screen.
October 31, 2016: On All Hallow’s Eve, The Hollywood Reporter pronounces that Disney is growing a live-action musical movie adaptation of Snow White—the newest in a string of big-screen reimaginings kicked off by the studio’s critically and commercially profitable redos of Cinderella and The Jungle Book. Director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer and The Amazing Spiderman 2) will helm the movie primarily based on a script from screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson ( The Girl on the Train). Songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the future EGOT-winning workforce behind Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land, and The Greatest Showman, are tapped to jot down new music for the movie, which might be produced by Legally Blonde and Wicked superproducer Marc Platt. What might presumably go unsuitable?
June 22, 2021: But who will play the movie’s titular function? None apart from rising starlet Rachel Zegler. Zegler is forged months earlier than the world is launched to her as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story—a job that can quickly win her a Golden Globe for greatest actress in musical or comedy. At the time, Deadline reviews that “early footage of Zegler in West Side Story” is so robust that it clinched Zegler the main function. “Her strength, intelligence, and optimism will become an integral part of rediscovering the joy in this classic Disney fairy tale,” says Webb in an announcement.
June 2021: Zegler’s casting instantly causes uproar on-line. Right-leaning Disney followers, nonetheless smarting at the truth that Halle Bailey, a Black lady, has been tapped to play Ariel in The Little Mermaid remake, redirect their ire at Zegler, who’s Latina. Conservatives rail in opposition to Disney for “going woke” and casting ethnically various ladies to play their beloved fictional princesses—a completely regular and under no circumstances silly factor to be mad at.
November 4, 2021: Gal Gadot, star of Wonder Woman and deliverer of the road “enough champagne to fill the Nile” in Death on the Nile, is forged to play the Evil Queen. There’s no drama right here but, however watch this area.
January 24, 2022: While showing on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Peter Dinklage slams the reimagined Snow White. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on,” he says. “Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback [when] they were very proud to cast a Latina 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. It makes no sense to me.”
Dinklage clarifies that he has nothing in opposition to Zegler—the 2 would go on to star collectively in The Hunger Games: Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes in 2023—however makes it exceedingly clear that he’s offended by the very idea of remaking Snow White, a fairy story that presents little folks in a retrograde method. “You’re progressive in one way but then you’re still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together,” he says. “What the fuck are you doing, man?”
January 25, 2022: Disney shortly responds to Dinklage’s feedback in regards to the illustration of dwarfism in Snow White. In an announcement to Deadline, a Disney spokesperson says the next: “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. We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period.”
January 31, 2022: In a Variety Q & A with Andrew Garfield, Zegler opens up in regards to the backlash to her casting. “When it was announced, it was a huge thing that was trending on Twitter for days, because all of the people were angry,” she tells Garfield. “Never in a million years did I imagine that this would be a possibility for me. You don’t normally see Snow Whites that are of Latin descent, even though Snow White is really a big deal in Spanish-speaking countries. Blanca Nieves is a huge icon, whether you’re talking about the Disney cartoon or just different iterations and the Grimm fairy tale and all the stories that come with it. But you don’t particularly see people who look like me or are me playing roles like that.”