Snow White’s Scary Adventures at the Box Office

Both CNN and AP described Snow White’s opening weekend box office as “sleepy.” Does that make Disney feel Bashful? Grumpy? Dopey? It’s not good news, Doc. $43 million domestic is nothing to get Sneezy at. But Happy? Bob Iger is not.

Audiences are staying away from Snow White in droves, but why? Maybe it’s the endless controversies that have dogged the film’s production. Or the reviews which offer Rachel Zegler glowing praise and very little else besides “Hey, it’s not the worst Disney live-action movie!” Or it could be the CGI monstrosities they made the dwarfs into. Maybe a movie about leftist infighting over how to respond to fascism doesn’t seem all that fun to watch right now, for whatever reason. In psychoanalysis, this is called “overdetermination,” when something has many, many root causes. And trying to figure out which is the rootiest of roots is bears no fruit.

Snow White still topped the weekend box office. Coming in at number 2 was Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag, then Captain America: Brave New World in its sixth week. Mickey 17 and Novocaine rounded out the top 5. Double De Niro gangster flick The Alto Knights was the other movie to debut in the top 10 at number 6, with just under $3.2 million. And The Day the Earth Blew Up, the little Looney Tunes movie that could, stayed in the mix at number 7.

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