Does "Snow White" opening weekend box office indicate people are tired of Disney remakes?

It could be sui generis and just about this particular movie. Rachel Zegler is not a star. Gal Gadot is, but she's an increasingly-controversial one. Maybe this is just about people largely saying "Eh, I think I'll pass" to this "Snow White" movie. 

The bigger concern, for the industry, would be that this is going to be a down year at the box office domestically. "Snow White" made less in its opening weekend than "Dumbo" in 2019. To be fair, that was before COVID-19 reshaped people's relationship to movie theaters, but that's kind of the point.

However, it might also be that Disney's preoccupation with live-action remakes of animated classics has lead to fatigue. "Aladdin" was a while ago now, and the plan did hit a snag when a few released in a row hit Disney+ without theatrical releases. Do you even remember David Lowery's Peter Pan movie, though? Hopefully you were able to forget Robert Zemeckis' nightmarish "Pinocchio" film. "Cruella" kind of got stuck between stations, making $233.5 million worldwide off of a budget of $100 million, with $86.1 million of that being domestic returns. It was also released during the mercifully brief "Premier Access" era of Disney+.

In 2023, "The Little Mermaid" made $298.2 million domestically and $569.6 million worldwide. Those are big numbers devoid of context, but the film cost $240.2 million to make, so it turned a slim profit at best, and was far from the returns of "The Jungle Book," but less "Aladdin."

Now, you might be primed to say, "What about 'Mufasa' though?" It debuted to $35.4 million domestically and ended up bringing in $717.5 milion worldwide. Well, "Mufasa" and "The Lion King" are not live-action movies. They are photorealistic animated movies designed to look as close to live action as possible. Also, they are about animals running around and getting on adventures, an easier sell overseas. To that end, "Mufasa" made only $253.3 million of that worldwide total domestically.

There will be another test case arriving in 2025. The live-action "Lilo & Stitch" comes out later this year. If that film underperforms like "Snow White," presuming the latter continues apace, maybe Disney should just cool it with mining its historical I.P. for a minute.

(h/t The Hollywood Reporter)