‘Snow White’ Opens to a Poisoned $43 Million at Box Office
Disney’s “Snow White” took a larger Friday-to-Saturday drop than expected and is now projected for a $43 million domestic opening weekend from 4,200 locations with a global launch of just $87 million..
That slide takes the film below pre-release estimates for a $45 million domestic and $100 million global start and doesn’t bode well for its chances to leg out to a theatrical profit against its $250 million-plus production budget.
While Disney did recently have a big comeback story with “Mufasa,” which opened to $35 million domestically and finished with $714 million worldwide, that movie had several weeks of holiday season play to take advantage of. “Snow White” could hypothetically leg out with families during the spring school breaks spread out between now and Easter weekend but will have to contend with competition from “A Minecraft Movie” in early April.
What’s more, reception scores aren’t as strong as “Mufasa,” earning a B+ on CinemaScore — the lowest logged for a Disney remake — and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 43% critics and 74% audience compared to 57% and 89% respectively for “Mufasa.” The only bright spot is that the film’s CinemaScore subsets include an A- among female moviegoers as well as kids and teens, the core demos that Disney will need to keep turning out to find any sort of staying power.
Despite this weak result, Disney should be able to shrug off any loss it incurs on “Snow White” with a stronger slate for the rest of 2025, starting with a remake of “Lilo & Stitch” on Memorial Day weekend and capped off with sequels to “Zootopia” and “Avatar” during the holidays.
And in a testament to how bad it has been for the first quarter box office, “Snow White” is still the second highest opening of the year so far behind only a slightly better but also underperforming Disney release, Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World,” which just crossed the $400 million global mark in its sixth weekend.
Overall domestic grosses for the weekend only somewhat improved to an estimated $76 million, up from the historic March lows of $54 million last weekend but down 28% year-over-year as no other film aside from “Snow White” grossed more than $5 million. Through Saturday, monthly totals for March, which is usually a lucrative period for theaters, have collapsed 52% from 2024.
Holdovers complete the rest of the top 5, with Warner Bros.’ “The Alto Knights” failing to crack that list with a terrible $3.2 million opening from 2,651 theaters. Produced on a $45-50 million budget, the mafia drama starring Robert De Niro has been rejected by critics and ignored by audiences, earning Rotten Tomatoes scores of 39% critics and 71% audience.
In second this weekend is Focus Features’ “Black Bag” with $4.4 million in its second weekend. That’s a 42% drop from its disappointing $7.5 million start and leaves it unlikely to turn a theatrical profit with a $14.8 million domestic total against a reported $50 million budget.
“Captain America: Brave New World” is in third with $4.1 million and a $192 million domestic total, followed by Warner Bros.’ “Mickey 17” and Paramount’s “Novocaine” with $3.7 million each.
More to come…
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