Two disconnected events unfolded in popular culture last week.

One was ChatGPT’s image generator offering Studio Ghibli-style portraits and recreating scenes and situations. The other was the cinematic release of a remake of Snow White.

The images, inspired by the style of the legendary co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, became a global craze within hours. Everyone’s timeline was flooded, everyone and their aunts were discovering Miyazaki and anime.

Snow White, on the other hand, tanked spectacularly. Critics gave it 44 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. But at the box office, at least according to initial figures, Snow White brought in $87 million in its opening weekend globally, with just $43 million domestically.

If one compares it with other Disney movies, The Lion King did $191 million domestically, Beauty and the Beast $174 million, Alice in Wonderland $116 million, and The Jungle Book $103 million in the same period.

One of biggest reasons attributed to Snow White’s bombing at the collection is its insistent wokeness and the pro-Palestine, anti-white utterances of its lead actor, Rachel Zegler. Jonah Platt, son of Snow White producer Marc Platt, publicly blamed Zegler for the Disney remake’s weak box office collection, accusing her of “narcissism" and dragging “personal politics" into its promotion.

“Yeah, my dad, the producer of enormous piece of Disney IP with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, had to leave his family to fly across the country to reprimand his........

© News18