Box Office: ‘Snow White’ Leads With Sleepy $43 Million, Robert De Niro’s Mob Drama ‘Alto Knights’ Misfires With Disastrous $3 Million Debut

variety.com:

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter “Snow White” may be the fairest of them all with a leading $43 million in its domestic box office debut, but Disney’s latest live-action remake is off to a sleepy start.

Overseas, “Snow White” also opened slightly behind projections with $44.3 million for a global launch of $87.3 million. Heading into the weekend, the film was estimated to collect $100 million globally. “Snow White” arrived in theaters dogged with controversies, including criticism about the film’s depiction of the seven dwarves, complaints about changes to the nearly 100-year-old story and calls for boycotts because of co-stars Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot’s public stances on the Israel-Hamas war.

There were also expensive reshoots, which added many millions to the film’s budget. Disney as a result scaled back the movie’s Los Angeles premiere, doing without traditional red carpet interviews.

However, analysts don’t believe the deluge of bad publicity actually hurt ticket sales all that much. “This is a situation that is never ideal,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. ‘In the case of ‘Snow White,’ kids and families likely just wanted to see a PG film and [were] perhaps unaware of the controversies.” Still, this cinematic take on the 1937 animated classic has notched the lowest domestic debut to date for Disney’s various reimaginings, below even 2019’s “Dumbo” which took flight with $45 million (without adjusting for inflation).