“Snow White” partial poster featuring Rachel Zegler.
It appears Rachel Zegler’s Snow White is raising the white flag as the Disney film has tumbled out of the box office top five less than a month after opening.
Starring Zegler as the title character and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, Snow White, of course, is the live-action adaptation of Disney’s 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Following years of controversies during the musical fairy tale’s production — including Zegler’s biting remarks about the original, her divisive political comments on social media and Disney’s decision to render seven CGI dwarfs following an outcry by actor Peter Dinklage — the film hit the wall in its opening frame March 21-23.
The film’s opening weekend tally of $42.2 million from 4,200 North American theaters was underwhelming, considering it had a $270 million production budget, per The Numbers, before prints and advertising costs.
At least the opening three-day take was enough to earn the No. 1 spot at the box office, but even that crowning achievement for the Disney princess movie didn’t last that long.
In the film’s second weekend, Snow White’s business dropped a staggering 66% percent for a $14.3 million tally from 4,200 theaters while Jason Statham’s crime thriller A Working Man took the No. 1 with $15.3 million.
Last weekend, Snow White skidded to No. 4 at the domestic box office with $5.9 million in ticket sales and this weekend the film is projected to earn about half of that.
After dropping out of 450 North American theaters last weekend, Snow White shed another 1,210 venues on Friday. As a result, Snow White is projected by Deadline to earn $2.8 million this weekend from 2,540 theaters domestically for a No. 8 finish at the box office in its fourth Friday to Sunday frame.
If the tally holds, it will up Snow White’s domestic gross to $81.9 million. Coupled with the film’s international take, Snow White has earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $173 million to date.
Rachel Zegler in “Snow White.”
‘A Minecraft Movie’ And Five New Wide Releases Doomed ‘Snow White’ This Weekend
Without question, part of the reason Snow White took a dive last weekend was because of the opening of another PG family film — Jack Black and Jason Momoa’s A Minecraft Movie — which defied all pre-opening box office projections to earn over $163 million domestically.
Unlike Snow White’s drastic 66% drop in its second weekend, A Minecraft Movie is estimated to drop only 50% from its opening weekend numbers, making an already impressive box office run even better.
Even more damaging to Snow White’s fourth-weekend prospects, though, were the wide releases of five new films this weekend — The King of Kings, The Amateur, Warfare, Drop and The Chosen: The Last Supper Part 3. The films, in that respective order, are projected by Deadline to take the No. 2 through No. 6 spots at the domestic box office this weekend.
Taking the No. 7 spot ahead of Snow White is the film that bumped it out of first place two weekends ago: A Working Man, Deadline projected.
With only one new major domestic release on the docket for next weekend — director Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan in dual roles — Snow White may have only one more weekend in the box office top 10.
The film’s next best hope for making anything from its massive budget back will come when the film is released on digital streaming and becomes available for purchase or rent on video on demand.
While the PVOD date for Snow White is yet to be announced, it’s a pretty safe guess that the tale of the film’s run in theaters is one that will not end happily ever after.
