The Walt Disney Co.’s live-action, controversy-bedeviled “Snow White” opened in theaters with a sleepy $43 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

With a budget above $250 million, “Snow White” had set out with higher ambitions, particularly since it returns Disney to its very origins. The 1937 original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the company’s first animated feature, and paid for its Burbank studio lot.

But this “Snow White” struggled to find anything like a fairy tale ending. The runup to release was plagued by controversies over the film’s handling of the dwarfs, who are rendered in CGI, and backlashes over comments by its star, Rachel Zegler, about the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

The comments — including “Always remember, free Palestine” from Zegler on an unrelated promotional post about the movie — came amid a campaign to boycott the film over the inclusion of Israeli costar Gal Gadot, who played the evil queen.

Gadot, who starred in the “Wonder Woman” blockbuster movies, has publicly advocated for Israel over the years, especially since Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.

The PR headaches........

© The Times of Israel