Latest Figures Confirm Disney’s Live-Action ‘Snow White’ Is One Of The Biggest Box Office Flops Of All Time Despite Benefitting From A Huge UK Government Tax Credit
The allure of cheap labor and lucrative UK tax incentives for film productions has proved irresistible for Hollywood as big studios now prefer setting up across the Atlantic. However, chasing incentives abroad comes with its own downsides as UK laws force production companies to make the cost of production public, as opposed to the US, where they remain a heavily guarded secret. Studios don’t seem to mind the rules, unless, of course, they reveal facts that threaten investor confidence, which is why Forbes’s latest report on the staggering losses incurred in the making of the controversial 2025 Snow White live-action film is so damning for Disney.
According to Forbes, Disney’s registered production company, Hidden Heart Productions, which was responsible for the entire production process of Disney’s Snow White in the UK, reported production costs amounting to £271.1 million ($365.8 million) in its tax filings as of December 31, 2024.
The costs, which came just a few months before the film’s theatrical release, indicate that the actual expenditure exceeded the film’s initial reported budget of $240M to $270M. However, UK laws allow tax refunds of 25% for qualifying productions, which earned Disney a £52.3M ($70.6M) tax refund, reducing the film’s net costs to £218.8M ($295M).
With a dismal box office return of just of $205.7M, Disney’s take from the film’s theatrical run was just $103M, based on the current 50-50 revenue-sharing agreement between theaters and studios. The Forbes report, therefore, brings Snow White’s gross box office losses to $192.2M, even with the tax credit.
It is also important to note that these figures don’t include the film’s global marketing expenses, which Deadline estimated at $111M, as well as residual expenses estimated at $29M. While Snow White got some respite in digital release as it became a major hit on Disney +, it doesn’t demean the fact that it is one of the biggest box office flops of all time.
To put it into context, Snow White only lost $45M less than The MCU’s biggest ever flop, The Marvels, which lost $237M. These losses would be offset by other revenues, especially from streaming, home entertainment, and merchandise sales. However, these revenues also come with additional expenses. The actual extent of the film’s financial woes will become clearer when Disney’s annual financial reports are released in the US.
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Reports of the film’s runaway costs started emerging in late 2022, just after principal Photography wrapped. After a shocking fire ripped through the set at Pinewood Studios in Scotland and a troubled start-stop filming process caused by the SAG-AFTRA strike, Hidden Heart Productions reported costs totalling £150.5M ($202.8M) on July 31, 2022.
Its bloated filming costs guaranteed Disney a £29.5M ($39.8M) tax refund from the UK government at the time, which was reinvested into the production, according to the Daily Mail report. However, this was just the beginning of the film’s financial crisis as extensive reshoots and a lead actress turned PR nightmare forced the production to hemorrhage extensive amounts in post-production and marketing.
Snow White remains one of the most popular IPs among the Disney classics, which made this live-action remake one of Disney’s most anticipated films when it was commissioned, back in 2016. However, in an attempt to be politically correct, Disney managed to strip the film of most of the aspects that made Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs a timeless masterpiece in the first place.
First, the production’s decision to do color-blind casting saw Rachel Zegler, a Latina actress of Colombian descent, chosen from a list of over 30,000 candidates, to play Snow White, a character whose skin is described as white as Snow in the source material. Then, instead of embracing the original story, Zegler and the production team chose to reshape it to fit their political views.
“I mean, you know, 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…Weird! Weird. We didn’t do that this time,” Zegler said at the D23 Expo in 2022.
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Her disregard for the 1937 Disney cartoon by David Hand angered many fans online, including David Hand, the son of the director of Disney’s 1937 cartoon, who said the co-directors of the film must be “rolling in their graves.” During her interview, Zegler also said that the whole Prince Charming love story would be watered down to a platonic encounter with the film’s lead male character, which turned out to be true, causing further dismay from fans.
After apologizing for disrespecting the original story, Zegler then dropped another PR bomb when the first trailer dropped in August 2024. The actress signed off her comments after thanking fans with the words “always remember, free Palestine,” causing the trailer to be review-bombed and receive one of the highest numbers of dislikes in YouTube’s history. She then refused to pull down her comments despite the producer, Marc Platt’s, desperate efforts to convince her otherwise.
Zegler’s comments further increased the delicate political stakes around the film as her costar, Gal Gadot, who previously worked with the IDF and has openly supported Israel, received death threats, forcing Disney to hire additional security for her. Zegler’s activism proved an even bigger liability in 2024 when she unleashed an expletive-filled attack on Donald Trump and his supporters after he won the 2024 Presidential Election.
Further controversy was caused by Disney’s decision to replace the titular seven dwarfs from the original story with AI-generated “magical beings.” The move was an attempt by the production to appease actors living with dwarfism after Peter Dinklage condemned the original cartoon, where the princess is saved by cave-dwelling dwarfs, as backward.
By the time the film was released in 2025, Snow White’s PR standing was so bad that it missed its already watered-down forecast by a whopping 13%, raising just $87.3M globally in its opening weekend. Its tumultuous theatrical run ended up earning just $205.7M. For an IP that was largely considered safe when the film was announced, its abysmal theatrical run was shocking. The producer, Marc Platt, later blamed the whole debacle on Rachel Zegler’s “immaturity.”
