SNOW WHITE | 03.21.2025 | Disney

[PlatnumRoyce]

Regardless of if that's true, I just doubt this is evidence of that. To flag an alternative potential negative explanation, it's not uncommon to see arguments like "marketing materials were delayed because problems with the film's production/creative disagreements on set pushed back start of marketing."

I'm not saying that's true, I just think  we're not focusing enough on what we know we don't know. The arguments here strike me as best understood as separate from calendar point because I'm struggling to see what calendar points add. Sure, keep it on the radar but I just don't think that point's well established yet. 

  

18 minutes ago, ThePrinceIsOnFire said:

You're right but I don't think that the strike is the reason for the lack of promotion on this one.

Despite what many try to claim, nobody expected TLM total gross to be as low as it turned out to be...They've alwys known that they don't have a billion dollar maker in their hands with Snow White,  but now they can be sure that they don't even have a 500M dollar maker. They simply can't afford to waste 200+ M dollars on P&A like they did for The little mermaid on this Snow White, they need to keep the costs under 100M in hopes of achieving a breakeven. They will have this play out more like Hunted Mansion marketing wise, or get even less promotion than that.  

 

I wanted to spot check the second tier of live action reboots - Branaugh's Cinderella got a teaser trailer 10 months before the film's release (and another one 4 months before) and they spent $60M Domestic P&A + 70M Int P&A. That's not 200M but it's comparable with plenty of larger films marketing spends from the period. Dumbo had a teaser trailer 6 months before theatrical release and no P&A reports (though they stressed it got a good marketing push in trades).  

I just don't see how we've reached the "ring the alarm bell, Disney's dumping the film" spot in the calendar. At most it's pretty weak evidence. Wouldn't the missing stuff be incredibly cheap? I imagine a lot of initial teaser trailer stuff comes from earned media noise and Disney's ownership of other channels ensures a lot of that can be done in house. 
 

Quote

There is just no way they didn't learn from that huge mistake.

 

Sure, but what lessons and which balance sheet? I can't imagine it makes conceptual sense to compare a D+ release that got promoted to the big leagues to a Disney princess film. They're just not comparable. Especially given non-theatrical revenue outlets, I just doubt Disney's assumption that the way to maximize revenue *given sunk costs* is to dump a Disney princess film especially if they assume this isn't a one-off game.

 

You could just as easily argue for spending more to increase quality and ensure better WoM over time (Disney's takeaway from elemental's run is that D+ hurt pixar's specialness but quality was proven in box office audience interest and it caused pixar to regain some brand value)
 

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

1 hour ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

Sure, but what lessons and which balance sheet? I can't imagine it makes conceptual sense to compare a D+ release that got promoted to the big leagues to a Disney princess film. They're just not comparable. Especially given non-theatrical revenue outlets, I just doubt Disney's assumption that the way to maximize revenue *given sunk costs* is to dump a Disney princess film especially if they assume this isn't a one-off game.
 

 

The main issue here is that this is just as much of "a disney princess" film as it is a "Old Walt classic" like Dumbo, Pinocchio and Peter Pan, and the latter two were sent straight two disney+ with almost zero promotion. 

This project is clearly a lower tier movie with a budget that should not be that much bigger than those two, especially if we consider that they had Jude Law and Tom Hanks as headliner there to Gal Gadot's here, so as far as actors go the expenses should not be higher for Snow White.

In my opinion, the "marketabilty" of Snow White as a spun of the disney princess brand is the main reason that kept this movie as a theatre release despite TLM's underperformance, otherwise it would have been dumped to disney+ already. But while they surely can make some extra money from this via the disney princess merchandising, it still won't be enough for them to actually care for a larger, more expensive, marketing campaign. 

Otherwise, they would have released the 30 second teaser already, as we all know that it has been shown in conventions, yet they aren't because they just can't afford to give this a marketing push right now when they have a more lucrative animated film, WISH, that is coming out in november and that has been poorly marketed so far. They will put all the money on Wish's campaign for now, and once they are done with it, start with Snow White, though in a way more muted effort.

[MovieMan89]

It certainly seems possible the script might actually be really good if they decided to keep it theatrical. Again, why doubt Gerwig right now. 

[DAJK]

I’ve followed Zegler on social media for ages and honestly the 1937 comment, whether you like her tone or not, is definitely not the general vibe she gives off. She often comes across as a very sweet actress, and I think the people taking this one comment and applying it to her whole personality are just jumping on the bandwagon.

[ringedmortality]

10 minutes ago, DAJK said:

She often comes across as a very sweet actress

 

She often comes across as a theater kid with rich parents.

[Bob Train]

TLM didn’t have a good performance in Japan, all the other Disney renaissance remakes made orders of magnitude more in Japan. Just because it didn’t completely implode like it did in SK or China doesn’t make it a good performance. That skewed perception.

 

People like to spout racism or whatever for why it underperformed overseas, but the truth is people don’t want to put in the effort to watch a movie they can watch anytime on D+, or just wait until remake comes on D+.

 

Post-COVID, audiences need a real hook to come to theaters in huge numbers, and bland, boring, lazy remakes are not it.

 

I expect Snow White and Mufasa (which is written by the guy who wrote KOTCS and Pirates 5 lol) to implode at the box office, and end live-action remake era for Disney. live-action Moana with the Rock will either be hastily shoved to D+ or bomb thanks to a bloated budget like Black Adam did.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Bob Train

[ringedmortality]

31 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Mufasa (which is written by the guy who wrote KOTCS and Pirates 5 lol)

You’re telling me Jenkins didn’t re-write it?

[Ryan Reynolds]

3 hours ago, DAJK said:

I’ve followed Zegler on social media for ages and honestly the 1937 comment, whether you like her tone or not, is definitely not the general vibe she gives off. She often comes across as a very sweet actress, and I think the people taking this one comment and applying it to her whole personality are just jumping on the bandwagon.

i didn't think much about her before , besides being that actress that complained about not getting an invite to the Oscars. But when i listened to a longer interview on a podcast  she seemed very fun and funny. she is also into star wars , which is cool.

[Eric is Quiet]

Moderation

 

We don’t need to set conspiracies about this film being intentionally under marketed, nor do we need to dog on Zegler for doing the usual PR thing of “our princess movie isn’t like the old one”. You guys are acting really weird over this silly kids movie, like you guys are desperately wanting this to bomb (wonder why…) and it’s frankly gotten old. You don’t have to go on and on about why a film you don’t care about will bomb and it frankly creates unneeded toxicity. So just stop. Okay?

[PlatnumRoyce]

17 minutes ago, Eric the Turtle said:

doing the usual PR thing of “our princess movie isn’t like the old one”.

Sure, it's dumb to not contextualize such claims inside of larger trends but aren't you pretty explicitly making the case for this to be worth discussing (perhaps just not in a lazy way?).  This is like saying we don't need to talk about how each new Marvel Studios film sells itself as a unique snowflake or how nearly every Bond film since Goldeneye has had a metatexual reference about the character being "a dinosaur." 

These are clearly issues the brands as major corporate entities have identified has major potential marketing problems and want to address. 

This speaks to the core elevator pitch of the film. It's dumb to not contextualize such claims inside of larger trends but the fact they're clearly an intentionally significant part of the film/film's marketing shouldn't be ignored. "Watch this film, we're going to fix the stuff from the old film that you should find embarrassing and lacking about how princesses/their love interests are depicted" is clearly relevant. 
 

[filmlover]

Claiming that a movie that doesn't come out for more than seven months is being underpromoted or sabotaged is the definition of Trying It when not only is it so far away but also because there's no movies coming out that directly target its demos that they can bow it in front of. Given the late March release date, expect the marketing to kick off, at the latest, in time for The Marvels given the obvious studio/audience overlap they share followed by a bunch of other compatible movies (Hunger Games, Wish, Wonka, etc.) that they can attach it to over the holidays.

[ChipDerby]

Please do not buy into any narrative that Disney "can't afford" marketing for this. Disney is one of the biggest companies in the world. They're currently saving millions not paying actors and writers. They could buy every super bowl slot for this and still afford to pay Iger hundreds of millions in bonus.

[The GOAT]

21 hours ago, ringedmortality said:

 

She often comes across as a theater kid with rich parents.

She's one half of your profile pic and you're not cape-ing for her. 

[ringedmortality]

2 minutes ago, The GOAT said:

She's one half of your profile pic and you're not cape-ing for her. 

I ain’t no simp

[WittyUsername]

So people are mad at Rachel Zegler because she said that a movie from 1937 might not have aged well by modern societal standards? Is that really a spicy take now? 

[Ryan Reynolds]

21 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

So people are mad at Rachel Zegler because she said that a movie from 1937 might not have aged well by modern societal standards? Is that really a spicy take now? 

apparently , but it just makes me want to watch the original now, have not seen it in decades

[Redolent]

45 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

So people are mad at Rachel Zegler because she said that a movie from 1937 might not have aged well by modern societal standards? Is that really a spicy take now? 

She said separately that she watched the original animation once, was terrified of it and never watched it again. It’s clear that she strongly dislikes it in general, possibly hates it. There's not much nuance beyond this, and for some people it raises all the old questions about why ‘adapt’ something so clearly distasteful, and is it even the same product by the end.
 

It made me think of the Barbie marketing campaign, and the line: ‘if you love Barbie, this movie is for you / if you hate Barbie this movie is for you’, and how that worked so well: it both drew in audiences who really connected with the brand, but also kind of rehabilitated it to those who had genuine problems with Barbie. Since Greta is involved (interestingly, she was added on as a screenwriter, not the original one), I’m hoping we get some of that more inclusive language coming through.
 
 

[MovieMan89]

Lmao at Disney not being able to “afford to market” this, that’s a good laugh. 
 

If they don’t market it well, they must think they have a dud. Though they’d likely not be doing theatrical in that case. 

Edited August 13, 2023 by MovieMan89

[Boxx93]

I highly doubt Gerwig will have with SW the same creative freedom that Mattel and Warner gave her with Barbie.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Boxx93

[Hatebox]

11 hours ago, Ryan Reynolds said:

apparently , but it just makes me want to watch the original now, have not seen it in decades

I rewatched it as part of a Disney binge with my son. It still looks incredible but it’s really boring. So. Much. Singing.

 

I can’t even blame its age because Pinocchio, the follow-up, is one of my favourites.

 

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by Hatebox