Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs

[Prince-1]

I’m curious - did any of the posters defending Zegler expect the film to do well? I’ve always expected a bomb, and not primarily because of the hate campaign. Snow White is not particularly relevant to modern audiences, it’s a hard film to adapt, fewer films are hits for a lot of reasons, and most of the live-action remakes are mediocre at best.

TP found one person who apparently thought that Snow White was gonna be a success. Apparently there are other people, but he has yet to find them in his exhaustive searching through various threads.

But to answer your question, no, no one thought that Snow White was going to be a runaway hit.

 

[AdventureHasAName]

You post some strange stuff. What I’m saying is that if you read his posts they say what they say without calling anyone names.

He's passive-aggressively insulting a large portion of the message board in a fashion so that he can try and claim plausible deniability. It's the "I never specifically called anyone a racist, I just took verbiage from their posts and said that anyone who uses that verbiage is behaving in a racist fashion" defense. It's a way of intentionally blowing up the thread, but doing so in a way that he can claim he didn't start the insulting discourse.

I'm simply pointing it out publicly so that when the moderator inevitably enters the thread and wipes 1/4th of the posts out (again), she hopefully realizes how and why it started (again).

 

[Agent H]

Here’s a fact… watching an all day track meet is a struggle. 4x100 starts at 8:45am, last race 4x400 at 4:00pm

Okay?

 

[MagicMouseFan]

Okay?

I’m at a track meet

 

[Agent H]

I’m at a track meet

okay.

 

[Casper Gutman]

He's passive-aggressively insulting a large portion of the message board in a fashion so that he can try and claim plausible deniability. It's the "I never specifically called anyone a racist, I just took verbiage from their posts and said that anyone who uses that verbiage is behaving in a racist fashion" defense. It's a way of intentionally blowing up the thread, but doing so in a way that he can claim he didn't start the insulting discourse.

I'm simply pointing it out publicly so that when the moderator inevitably enters the thread and wipes 1/4th of the posts out (again), she hopefully realizes how and why it started (again).

I choose my words carefully and I have been honest about my opinions.

It’s worth noting that you don’t think the endless attacks on Zegler are “blowing up the thread,” the posters pushing back on them are.

 

[MagicMouseFan]

okay.

It’s where kids run around this thing called a track and it takes all day and all the parents are battling for the shady spots.

 

[Agent H]

He's passive-aggressively insulting a large portion of the message board in a fashion so that he can try and claim plausible deniability. It's the "I never specifically called anyone a racist, I just took verbiage from their posts and said that anyone who uses that verbiage is behaving in a racist fashion" defense. It's a way of intentionally blowing up the thread, but doing so in a way that he can claim he didn't start the insulting discourse.

I'm simply pointing it out publicly so that when the moderator inevitably enters the thread and wipes 1/4th of the posts out (again), she hopefully realizes how and why it started (again).

When @themom comes back and deletes a bunch of posts the blame will be on all of us. We should just hope the thread doesn’t get shut down.

 

[Chi84]

He's passive-aggressively insulting a large portion of the message board in a fashion so that he can try and claim plausible deniability. It's the "I never specifically called anyone a racist, I just took verbiage from their posts and said that anyone who uses that verbiage is behaving in a racist fashion" defense. It's a way of intentionally blowing up the thread, but doing so in a way that he can claim he didn't start the insulting discourse.

I'm simply pointing it out publicly so that when the moderator inevitably enters the thread and wipes 1/4th of the posts out (again), she hopefully realizes how and why it started (again).

What you describe is not “passive-aggressive” behavior. You can trust me on that one.

But you’re correct about discussing social/political issues being against the TOS.

 

[Agent H]

It’s where kids run around this thing called a track and it takes all day and all the parents are battling for the shady spots.

I know what it is. I just don’t have much more to say to that.

 

[Casper Gutman]

What you describe is not “passive-aggressive” behavior. You can trust me on that one.

But you’re correct about discussing social/political issues being against the TOS.

The difficulty is separating this film in particular and the discourse around it from its social/ political connotations.

In fact, the idea that media can be separated from social/ political considerations is a social/ political consideration. But the boards owners get to set the rules, which is fair enough.

 

[Disney Irish]

Did Bog Iger even acknowledge it during the shareholder call this week?

Yes he did.

 

[LittleBuford]

I’m curious - did any of the posters defending Zegler expect the film to do well?

No, not at all.

(I wouldn’t call it defending Zegler as such, but rather pushing for a less sensationalised and tendentious approach to her words.)

 

[Prince-1]

I’m at a track meet

Run fast.

 

[brideck]

I’m curious - did any of the posters defending Zegler expect the film to do well?

Against its budget? No. For gross? I'd expect it to be in the top... 25 or so for the year. That puts it firmly in the "one of the few movies people have actually heard of" category.

 

[WoundedDreamer]

The $270 million production number is brutal. It's almost exactly the same as the Little Mermaid's inflation adjusted production cost. I can sort of see how the Little Mermaid's undersea scenes could push production costs higher. There's no way to shoot "Under the Sea" practically. It was going to be a heavy VFX film, and with that comes a high price tag. It puzzles me that Snow White's spend was as much or even more. Were the dwarves that expensive?!?! Expensive reshoots seem to be the only answer. When the press, audiences, and budgets point to reshoots... It was probably reshoots.

I'm also wondering whether this $270 million number is before or after United Kingdom tax credits. Snow White was filmed in the United Kingdom, so it should be eligible for the grant. The Marvels cost ~$274 million to create, but it was softened with a ~$55 million tax credit that brought the production cost down to $220 million. Snow White might benefit from the same credit arrangement. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for government documents to trickle out over the next few years. If this includes the tax credit, Snow White's actual production cost would have been in the $300 millions. That would be insane.

This film is a black eye for Disney. This first half of 2025 is a weaker showing for Walt Disney Studios, but I'm optimistic about the second half of the year.

 

[Trauma]

Ok we can wrap this up. Film is going to lose money.

The spin is, it was never going to make money to begin with.

Zegler didn’t hurt the film at all.

If you have anything negative to say you are probably a racist you just don’t know it.

If anyone from Disney is reading this board please hire on of the genius minds here. They could have told you this was never going to make money and saved you a lot trouble.

The end.

 

[brideck]

The $270 million production number is brutal. It's almost exactly the same as the Little Mermaid's inflation adjusted production cost. I can sort of see how the Little Mermaid's undersea scenes could push production costs higher. There's no way to shoot "Under the Sea" practically. It was going to be a heavy VFX film, and with that comes a high price tag. It puzzles me that Snow White's spend was as much or even more.

You say this, but is there much in the way of cheaper, practical production design in this movie at all? Virtually every shot from the trailer looks like an FX shot of one stripe or another, but maybe that's not the case. Would anyone who's seen it already care to comment?

 

[Disney Irish]

You say this, but is there much in the way of cheaper, practical production design in this movie at all? Virtually every shot from the trailer looks like an FX shot of one stripe or another, but maybe that's not the case. Would anyone who's seen it already care to comment?

It was VFX heavy, anytime an animal was on screen (which was like 90% of the time, it is Snow White after all the original animal tamer) it’s a VFX shot.

 

[LittleBuford]

The spin is, it was never going to make money to begin with.

It really isn’t spin. You can go back and check the relevant posts if you don’t believe me.

Zegler didn’t hurt the film at all.

I’m sure the Zegler stuff hasn’t helped, but the film has also done really badly in markets where I don’t think her statements were widely publicised.