We Need to Talk About Disney's 'Snow White' (Again)

Welcome to The Trade, an examination and exploration of topics in the entertainment industry.

Though a portion of this is available for free subscribers, this is exclusive to my Gold Star Crew Gold Film Mavens.

Silver and Gold subscribers are the backbone of The Film Maven who support independent journalism, as well as female- and disabled-created content. Paid Film Mavens get access to shout-outs, exclusive articles and series, Zoom mixers, and The Film Maven Discord server.

Consider becoming a paid subscriber and joining the community that invests in independent journalism free of AI and influencer opinions!

Can't become a recurring member now? That's totally fine! Consider dropping a little something in the tip jar to let me know you like what you're reading.

The D23 Expo (I’m not typing out the new name they gave it) took place this weekend in Anaheim and it was chockablock with information on upcoming movies, rides and TV shows. Friday saw the company put out a host of information on new films coming out over the next several years, and gave audiences a new look at the upcoming live-action adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

While Disney debuted a high-class teaser for the movie right away, illicit footage of what was presented in the room was uploaded to TikTok and that, combined with the trailer, had people feeling a certain way about the upcoming reimagining of Snow White (Rachel Zegler) and the seven independently wealthy men she decides to live with.

Disney has known of the issues inherent in their 1937 film and the gumption they had in even wanting to remake it, and expecting people to ignore the problems, seemed to imply the company’s infallibility. But what’s funny is how people online are responding to the clips released, and are going down some weird paths. There was a lot of discussion about how the heavy CGI creation of the dwarves, which Disney had initially called “magical creatures” but who knows if they kept that, crafted a weird uncanny valley effect. Others highlighted how easy it would have been for Disney to cast actual actors with dwarfism (like the 2012 non-Disney adaptation of Snow White, Mirror Mirror did, to strong effect). But many also kept bringing up one name when talking about the movie: Peter Dinklage.