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2ND UPDATE, Friday midday: Currently, Disney‘s Snow White is seeing $15.5 million today, which includes last night’s $3.5M, and will get the Rachel Zegler-Gal Gadot movie to the mid-$40Ms for a three-day total at the domestic box office. That’s right around where Dumbo was, jeez: That Tim Burton clunker did $15.2M on its opening day for a near $46M 3-day off a much cheaper production cost than Snow White ($170M versus $270M). Again, it all comes down to Saturday and Sunday matinees with Snow White particularly given its target of women.
Warner Bros may be wishing it were Disney right now: WB’s $50M Robert De Niro double gangster movie The Alto Knights per industry sources will be lucky to slot fifth with at least $1M today (including previews) and $3M for the weekend off a $50M production cost. Another unfortunate misfire for the studio of Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack…but Minecraft is coming.
More updates later on whether Snow White completely passes out.
UPDATED after previous EXCLUSIVE: Disney’s Thursday preview figure for Snow White came in at $3.5 million. Early PostTrak data shows 5 stars with kids under 12, and 84% of those kids who showed up were girls.
The film’s general audience is 3 stars. However, definite recommend is low at 39%. In fact, Warner Bros’ The Alto Knights has a higher definite recommend of 44%. Parents with Snow White are weathering the film at 2½ stars, though their definite recommend is higher at 52%.
Quorum pointed out today that bad buzz is only an indicator if it impacts tracking. Here’s what it noticed: The best comp for Snow White in Quorum’s books is 2023’s The Little Mermaid (which you’ll remember had a similar ire on social with the casting of Halle Bailey in the title role).
“Snow White was never tracking to open at the same level, though six weeks ago – at 42 days out – the data suggested that the film could open north of $60M. In the sea of tracking data, the one metric that is arguably most important is interest among young women. That is the demo that drove Mermaid and is expected to do the same for Snow White. At 42 days from release, interest among women under 35 was at 58%, eight points lower than Mermaid at 66%,” it said.
However, there was a delta between the two movies, with interest among women under 35 growing from 66% to 68% for Little Mermaid and Snow White‘s shrinking from 58% to 52%. Fourteen days out, interest in Snow White began to fall.
“It’s not uncommon for interest in a demo to rise and fall,” reports Quorum. “The impact of falling interest can be diminished if a film targets multiple demos. The danger arises when a film is reliant on a single demo to succeed. And when it’s that demo that shows erosion, the impact can be pretty severe. What looked like a $60M+ opening just two weeks ago began to look like a $40M+ debut.”
Nonetheless, we’ll see if young girls in droves really come to Snow White‘s rescue. Disney hasn’t allowed the veil to be lifted yet on the Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score.
PREVIOUS EXCLUSIVE, 11:45 PM Thursday: Disney’s Snow White, which has been dragged through the tabloids like she was Leona Helmsley, is seeing Thursday previews of $3.5 million, per our sources. Note, these numbers don’t come from Disney. Showtimes began at 2 p.m.
Where does this put the feature take of Disney’s original princess?
At that level, the Marc Webb-directed musical is above the $2.3M previews of 2019’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (18% of a $12.5M Friday for a 3-day of $36.9M) and Tim Burton’s Dumbo‘s $2.6M Thursday night (17% of a $15.2M Friday for a 3-day of $46M); both also were Disney feature adaptations of vault toons. It’s also not that far from DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 4, which did $3.8M in Thursday previews last year for a $19.4M Friday and $57.8M 3-day.
The success of this $270M production boils down to whether families with daughters go on Saturday and Sunday. Also, will moviegoers in red states clutch their pearls? It’s spring break and there’s 25% of K-12 schools are off Friday, a percentage that will generally hold for the next few weeks.
Snow White carries a high level of awareness at 94%, meaning audiences know the movie is out there. However, the level of interest on tracking is low at 39%, making many industry suits wonder whether a movie at that level has ever opened to north of $50M+.
Do families ignore all the noise that the pic’s star Rachel Zegler created and decide to go see what is a well-produced Disney live-action take of a classic toon? Get with the picture: Snow White isn’t some zany Stephen Sondheim-esque swing ala Joker: Folie à Deux or is it the crazy WTF 1981 Andy Kaufman-Bernadette Peters robot movie bomb Heartbeeps. This is a well-produced musical from Wicked producer Marc Platt, with songs by Oscar winners Pasek and Paul. Webb is the sublime romantic comedy director of (500) Days of Summer. Heck, Barbie‘s Greta Gerwig at one point polished the screenplay. In total, Snow White wasn’t made by 5-year-olds, or is it waving any political flag agenda. In fact, 2016’s Zootopia had a more overt political message going on, and that was released at a time leading into the first Donald Trump presidency. As one marketing studio czar said to me today, “Why wouldn’t any family want to see Snow White?”
Critical score for Snow White on Rotten Tomatoes is low at 46%. But so was Maleficent (54% Rotten, $69.4M 3-day), Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (40% Rotten) and Aladdin (57% Rotten, $91.5M), and reviews didn’t prevent those movies from doing stateside business. All of those Disney movies received A CinemaScores, so we’ll see where Snow White settles.
Snow White will be booked at 4,200 theaters with all the wish fulfillment of PLFs, 4DX, Screen-X, Dolby and Imax tickets.
Also opening this weekend wide is Warner Bros’ Barry Levinson-directed, Robert De Niro-starring gangster movie The Alto Knights. The movie has 38% Rotten Tomatoes critics score. We’re hearing previews are less than half million. The movie is expected to do low- to mid-single digits aimed at old men. Who doesn’t want to be Snow White tonight?
‘Ash‘
Shudder
Also wide this week is RLJE/Shudder’s Flying Lotus directed sci-fi horror movie Ash starring Eiza González and Aaron Paul at 1,136 theaters. The pic is 74% fresh with RT Critics.