The many controversies surrounding one of this year's biggest films, Snow White

Once upon a time, Disney making a live-action adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would have been a box office success story. Today? It’s a cautionary tale, with the beloved story struggling under an endlessly cursed production.

And while some of its controversies were stirred up by hateful outside forces, others can only be equated to Disney punching themselves in the gonads. And then getting up, brushing themselves off and doing it again.

Nevertheless, after years and years of outrage, drama and more outrage, Disney’s big-budget, live-action remake finally sashays into cinemas. And while years of rabid noise and sour headlines have made Snow White seem as appealing as biting into a poisoned apple, there remains a sizable factor that’s been overlooked when evaluating its chances of success.

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But before we get to that let’s revisit the catalogue of troubles that have plagued the $209million USD production.

Snow White was originally announced way back in 2016 but not a peep more was heard about it until 2021, when it was announced that Rachel Zegler, an actress of Colombian descent, had been cast as Snow White aka ‘the fairest of them all’.

This instantly caused a stink from the usual rancid corners of the internet, with Disney coming under racist fire for daring to cast a Latina in the lead — emphasis very much being placed on the character’s surname. This level of vitriol was sadly not uncommon for Disney projects with the Star Wars and Marvel franchises as well as Disney’s other live-action remakes like The Little Mermaid also getting attacked by these vocal trolls.

Not being their first rodeo, Disney was content to let the manufactured outrage fizzle out. However, in January of the following year actor Peter Dinklage caused big problems for the film after slating it on a podcast and calling it a “f...ing backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together.”

Global media quickly picked up on his comments and the story got too big for Disney to ignore. A week later they responded claiming to have consulted with “members of the dwarfism community,” about the film. While some in the community supported his comments, others vehemently spoke out against it, saying roles for actors with dwarfism were scarce enough without encouraging Disney to pluck seven prime jobs away.

But a bigger bombshell would hit a few months later when Zegler reignited anti-woke outrage by not showing the proper reverence to Disney’s original animated film. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs may be of historic importance to both Disney and cinema itself — it is, after all, the first-ever, full-length animated movie — but that didn’t stop Zegler from dropping her hot takes in an interview.

“The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her,” she snorted, before adding, “Weird! WEIRD! We didn’t do that this time.”

Meanwhile, Disney had seemingly forgotten about the damage done by Dinklage’s earlier comments because when a photo from the production leaked of the famed seven dwarfs, only one of them was portrayed by an actor with dwarfism.

It was an easily avoidable own goal and a sheepish Disney would go on to say that these actors were only stand-ins. Three months later in the most unsurprising news of all time it was announced that — spoiler alert — Doc, Happy, Grumpy and the gang would all be represented onscreen as CGI characters.

If Disney thought this was the end of their problems, they thought wrong. First, the writer and actor strikes of 2023 forced the film’s release to be delayed and then, a year later in August 2024, the film faced boycott calls due to the pro-Isralei stance of its second lead and former member of the IDF Gal Gadot, who plays the evil Queen in the film.

With the Left now sour on Snow White, Zegler stepped up to restore balance. After Donald Trump’s win in the US election last November she posted anti-Donald Trump sentiments on her Instagram account. The spluttering outrage from right-wing pundits was so vocal that she quickly apologised for the post.

Which brings us, more or less, to today. Has one film ever managed to anger seemingly everyone? Are there people left who aren’t outraged by this film? Is there anyone actually excited to go and see the damn thing?

Well, actually, yes. Last Saturday my 10-year-old daughter asked if we could go and see Snow White. She’s jazzed for it. As are her friends. And if their excitement levels match that of their global peers then the troubled film might just get its happily ever after, after all.