Live-Action Snow White Gets Big Update from Star Rachel Zegler

Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has finally completed filming — again. The Disney live-action remake of Walt Disney Animations’ first feature film has had a long road to the big screen. Directed by Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) and starring Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) in the lead role of Snow White, with Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) as the Evil Queen, the film was originally set to open in theaters in March 2024, but was delayed into 2025 following the SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strikes of 2023.

Part of that delay was so the film could do reshoots, which has finally concluded. Filming of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves initially took place back from March 7th to July 13, 2022. Reshoots began in June 2024, two years since initial filming began. Star Rachel Zegler posted on her Instagram story that reshoots had wrapped filming. She wrote, “That’s a wrap on Snow White, and I’m so freaking proud and emotional. love these people so much.” The Instagram story has since expired, but fan account Rachel Zegler Daily posted a screenshot on X:

The Many Setbacks Remaking Snow White

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has faced more setbacks than any other Disney live-action remake. The film was originally supposed to begin filming back in March 2020, but just before the cameras rolled, production was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While filming would begin two years later, in March 2022, just one week into filming, a fire broke out on set, destroying parts of the set.

The film was originally set to open in theaters on March 22, 2024, but on October 27, 2023, Disney pushed the film’s release date back a whole year to March 21, 2025. This was also the same day Disney released the film’s first official image, and the CGI Dwarves in the movie were highly mocked on social media sites.

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Disney’s Live-Action Snow White: Box Office Chances

While the Disney live-action remake fad was originally exciting for new audiences, with Alice in Wonderland making $1 billion worldwide and movies like Cinderella and The Jungle Bookbecoming box office smash hits, the trend quickly became one that started to frustrate fans and critics alike. Although Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King remakes all made $1 billion at the worldwide box office, audience sentiment toward them seems to be rather lukewarm to the point that there is a question if Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to 2019’s The Lion King, could bomb at the box office.

Meanwhile, Disney seems to have had less faith in its remakes of the Disney classics at the box office. Remakes of films from the Disney Renaissance, like Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, were given big theatrical releases, but following the box office disappointment of Dumbo, it seemed like Disney pushed films that Walt Disney oversaw to Disney+. Both the remakes of Lady and the Tramp and Peter Pan & Wendy were not released in theaters but instead released straight to streaming.

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Star Rachel Zegler has gotten a lot of unwarranted hate from people taking her words out of context to paint her and the film in a negative light. However, she still does have a large fanbase due to her roles in West Side Story and The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, so Disney is stacking the deck in their favor. The only film scheduled to open against it is Alto Knights, which stars Robert De Niro in dual roles as real-life gangsters Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. Additionally, like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, the March release date should coincide with kids being out of school for spring break. With filming now officially wrapped, it is only a matter of time until a trailer is released, likely in time for D23 this August.