Gal Gadot says the live-action Snow White’s poor box office was shaped by a climate in which celebrities feel pressed to speak out against Israel, telling interviewers in Israel that controversy surrounding the war bled into the film’s reception and that she was “disappointed” by the outcome. In the same exchange, posted this week, she described pressure inside entertainment circles to voice positions critical of Israel and said the noise around the release overshadowed the work.
Her comments arrive after a months-long online fight over the film and its stars. In August 2024, lead actor Rachel Zegler posted “free palestine” on X, a message that drew sustained attention heading into the March 2025 rollout. The film was also barred from cinemas in Lebanon, where authorities cited the Israeli nationality of Gadot, who previously served in the Israel Defense Forces. Street protests followed Gadot’s public appearances earlier this year, including at her Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, underscoring how the geopolitics around the war intersected with the movie’s press cycle.
At the ticket window, Snow White finished its run with about $205.7 million worldwide on a domestic gross of $87.2 million, far below typical live-action remake totals and well short of industry reports pegging production near $270 million before marketing. The film opened to $42.2 million domestically, posted a sharp second-weekend drop, and never found the word of mouth that lifted earlier reimaginings.
Analysts have pushed back on assigning the result to politics alone. Box office trackers pointed to mixed audience scores, franchise fatigue for legacy remakes, and uneven marketing as the more immediate drivers, arguing that online culture-war narratives can overstate their impact on consumer behavior. That reading aligns with a broader 2025 marketplace in which some brand titles underperformed while other family properties surged, suggesting Snow White’s trajectory reflected both film-specific reception and shifting appetite for this tranche of Disney updates.
