By Erich Schwartzel

The star of Disney's new live-action "Snow White" wasted no time hurling insults at the original version, saying it had "antiquated ideas about women in power." When the movie started filming, it created a rift in the dwarf-actor community: to use real dwarfs or not? The New York Post dubbed it "Snow Woke." Hollywood strikes shut down production, and a literal fire broke out that damaged the thatched roofing of one of the cottages on set. The actresses playing Snow White and the Evil Queen even staked out opposing sides about the war in Gaza.

Disney's latest movie has been one grim fairy tale.

When executives at Walt Disney Company decided a decade ago to make a modern "Snow White," they didn't imagine it would cause such a stir. They wanted to produce a new version of one of its beloved classic princess films that would appeal to, or at least not offend, everyone. They'd successfully done so with other sacred cows, such as "The Lion King" and "Mary Poppins."

Instead, it seemed like all of their decisions managed to make people angry. This Snow White would have more of a backbone than her predecessor, they decreed. She isn't just waiting around for a prince. Her name would be inspired by a snowstorm, instead of by having "skin as white as snow." Snow White would be played by the Latina actress Rachel Zegler. The dwarfs would be CGI, not human performers.

Disney spent nearly $300 million to make "Snow White," which opens Friday. It is expected to bring in a debut weekend gross of around $50 million in the U.S. That's not a massive haul compared with opening weekends for previous Disney reimaginings like "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King," both of which opened with weekends approaching $200 million. Early reviews have been somewhat positive, if you don't count the online mobs.

Disney's live-action updates have produced their share of hits -- six of the films have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide each. Other remade classics like "Dumbo" failed to take off, and a "Pinocchio" starring Tom Hanks as Geppetto was panned by critics.

"Snow White" is one of two live-action remakes Disney is releasing this year. "Lilo and Stitch" follows this summer, with "Moana" scheduled for next year and "Tangled" and others in development.

The problems for "Snow White" began soon after "West Side Story" actress Zegler was announced as its titular character, opposite "Wonder Woman" star Gal Gadot as her vengeful stepmother. Before filming began, Zegler referred to the animated film as "extremely dated."

Zegler's remarks were an articulation of the tension Disney faces when remaking beloved movies made at a different time with different social norms. (In the original "Cinderella," the princess chooses to marry Prince Charming despite the fact that he has spoken only six lines of dialogue, two of which are "Wait!")

To move forward with a new "Snow White," Disney executives tried to anticipate what today's audiences would expect -- which scenes must be included and what elements would be seen as out-of-date. For instance: the phrase "fairest of them all" had to be in there, but Disney executives fretted that audiences might assume their heroine was heralded for being the whitest of women.

They also contended with ugly responses to the casting of Zegler, who is of Colombian descent, which some fans posting on social media found hard to square with a character known for her pale skin.

"Fairest of them all," in this version, would have an expanded definition to mean the kindest, not just the most beautiful. The original Brothers Grimm fairy tale, published in 1812, references the snowstorm that now lends Snow White her name.

When online commentators criticized Zegler, the actress took matters into her own hands.

"Yes i am snow white no i am not bleaching my skin for the role," she posted on social media before later deleting the message. She described the critics this way: "losers obsessed with maintaining the bloodline purity of cartoon princesses."

Disney was already wading into various culture wars before Zegler's casting, when it introduced content warnings on some of its classic films, advising parents of the slur "redskins" in "Peter Pan" and of anachronistic stereotypes in the 1941 "Dumbo," which features a black avian character named Jim Crow. The warnings were mocked by critics who saw the warnings as an overcorrection.

"Snow White" soon turned into a punching bag for conservative YouTube commentators.

"NIGHTMARE FUEL! Rachel Zegler Turns 'Snow White' Into a Total Joke!" blared one video.

After Donald Trump's re-election, the actress fueled more ire when she posted a statement to Instagram saying, "may trump supporters and trump voters and trump himself never know peace." Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly responded: "Hello, Disney, you are going to have to redo your film again because this woman is a pig."

Then there was the dwarf issue. Peter Dinklage, whose work on "Game of Thrones" has made him the world's most prominent dwarf performer, criticized the idea of remaking "Snow White" at all. He accused Disney brass of hypocrisy for casting a Latina actress in the lead role of a movie that infantilized dwarfs.

"You're progressive in one way but then you're still making that f -- ing backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together?" he said on the comedian Marc Maron's podcast in January 2022.

Cameras had yet to roll.

Disney executives rushed to quell the response generated by Dinklage's comments. A consultant for Disney backchanneled to the actor to explain their plan. The studio issued a statement saying, "we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community."

With the new "Snow White," Disney executives figured that special effects had reached such a high quality that CGI dwarfs wouldn't read as out of sorts next to human actors. Filming began at Pinewood Studios, located outside London.

Then an on-set photo leaked: The Snow White character walking through a verdant field trailed not by the dwarfs of tradition but by seven people of various heights and races and genders. The British press gleefully spread it far and wide. No matter that the seven were actors playing a crew of bandits from a separate plotline, the damage had been done . Observers reached an incorrect conclusion that Disney's Snow White had traded in her dwarfs for a Benetton ad.

Zegler's comments and the misinterpreted photos fueled a narrative that has taken shape over the previous few years, one that turned Disney into target No. 1 for those looking for evidence of Hollywood's woke agenda.

At its theme parks, the company in 2021 replaced a greeting that began with "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls" with "Dreamers of all ages." Recent releases like "Lightyear" featured gay characters, and company leaders in 2022 had spoken out against Florida legislation that critics called the "Don't Say Gay" law -- putting them in a monthslong battle with the state's governor, Ron DeSantis.

To quell the dwarf uproar, Disney released an image from the film of Zegler standing with the seven CGI dwarfs to show, in the words of one former executive, that "we didn't go re-engineer the dwarfs."

It didn't work. Now dwarf performers were angry.

"This could have been a life-changing opportunity," said Dylan Postl, a 38-year-old dwarf who works as a pro wrestler with WWE and whose acting credits include "Muppets Most Wanted" and "Leprechaun: Origins."

Hollywood has come a long way from casting dwarfs in roles like the Munchkins or Oompa-Loompas that only allow performers to serve as punchlines or spectacles, said Postl. Disney executives had briefly toyed with the idea of casting live actors as the dwarfs before deciding that photorealistic visual effects was the better option.

From Postl's point of view, a new "Snow White" from Disney offered a huge opportunity for dwarf actors -- something that rarely comes along.

"All of these dwarfs have separate personalities, distinct personalities, " he said. "It's not 'Snow White and the Seven Kinda Normal-Sized Humans.'"

There was an additional pressure hanging over the Disney team as they navigated the new Snow White: the character's own history. Inside the company, Snow White is the princess known to some as "the one who bought the lot."

The original animated movie premiered in 1937, nearly a decade after Walt Disney had introduced Mickey Mouse to the masses in "Steamboat Willie." In the decade between the two productions, Disney teetered with insolvency -- the cost of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" reached an astronomical $1.5 million and required Walt Disney to put his own money into the film to get it completed.

After a gargantuan Hollywood premiere featuring Marlene Dietrich, pickax-wielding dwarfs and an actor dressed as Donald Duck, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" more than recouped its budget when it became the highest-grossing sound movie of all time. Adjusted for inflation, the film collected more than $4 billion. Sergei Eisenstein, director of "Battleship Potemkin," called it the greatest film ever made.

It also made the Walt Disney Company flush with cash. The spigot stayed open for years, and Walt's animators produced hits "Bambi," "Pinocchio" and "Dumbo."

Snow White has been a staple on the toy shelf and at Disney theme parks ever since. When "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" became available on home video in 1994, more than 10 million copies were sold in the first week. Along with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, she became an emblem of Walt's "flywheel" of promotion, in which box-office sales fuel toy purchases and theme-park visits in an endless loop.

Since the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White is in the public domain, other studios have been able to tell her story -- in bent versions like "Mirror Mirror" or "Snow White and the Huntsman," both released in 2012. A new Snow White from Disney would reinforce her connection to Disney itself.

In the summer of 2023, the crew of "Snow White" was rushing to wrap filming before an anticipated strike by the main actors' union was set to take effect. Some of the film's shots combined human performers with special effects that took weeks to finalize, and the race was on to get those shots "in the can" so the effects workers could tinker while the actors picketed.

Not all of the shots were completed, though, when the strike was called in July 2023. Filming wouldn't resume until it ended nearly four months later, forcing Disney to postpone the "Snow White" release from March 2024 to March 2025. And additional reshoots would be ordered as executives tried to get the film into better shape.

It was already a production laced with bad luck. A fire on set took out a tree and spread to a fake cottage, and video from the scene showed a blaze that required 12 firetrucks to extinguish.

Then the real world intervened. In the time between filming stints, Hamas led terrorist attacks in southern Israel that killed more than 1,200 people, and Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza. Gadot, a former Miss Israel who'd served in the country's Defense Forces, became one of Hollywood's most outspoken supporters of her home country. She organized screenings of a film that portrayed the atrocities and recently gave a keynote speech for the Anti-Defamation League blasting those who were "cheering on a massacre of Jews."

Zegler, her on-screen nemesis, shared her own thoughts on the war in August 2024, in a social-media post that concluded, "always remember, free palestine." It was an addendum to a post in which she thanked her followers for their support after the release of the "Snow White" trailer.

The two women now represented opposing sides of the conflict.

While Disney has released photos of the two smiling together at publicity events, advocacy groups for Palestinians have called for a boycott of the film given Gadot's involvement.

On Saturday, Disney held a red-carpet premiere on Hollywood Blvd., 4 miles from the location of the original 1937 premiere.

The 1937 event was called "the most extraordinary premiere in cinema history." The red carpet last Saturday had no outside press.

Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 20, 2025 20:00 ET (00:00 GMT)

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