Disney was probably hoping for a fairy tale ending, but Snow White crashed and burned instead. The much-hyped live-action remake starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot flopped hard, pulling in just $43 million domestically on opening weekend—way below expectations. And with a production budget of over $270 million, that’s the kind of bomb that even a magic mirror saw coming.

So, here’s everything that went wrong:

Where did all that money go?

John Malkovich Replies To Fans Online

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A $270 million price tag for this? Seriously, where did the money go?

Back in 2015, Disney’s Cinderella had a budget of just $95 million, looked incredible, and made $542 million worldwide. But Snow White cost nearly three times as much, and it’s already struggling to make a dent. Between endless delays, reshoots, and who knows what else, the budget spiraled out of control. Even if the film had done okay at the box office, it still wouldn’t have been enough to break even. At this point, it might not even make back half of what Disney spent on it.

Controversy? Sure, but it was doomed from the start

Yes, the backlash was loud—Rachel Zegler’s casting sparked some of the internet’s worst discourse, and her old comments about how the original Snow White was outdated definitely didn’t sit well with nostalgic Disney fans. Then, there was the whole seven dwarfs debate, with even Peter Dinklage calling it out.

But let’s be real: This wasn’t just about controversy. The second Disney dropped that first trailer, it was game over.

Audiences weren’t bejeweled

People just didn’t care. Critics weren’t impressed, and audiences weren’t exactly running to the cinema either. The film currently has an embarrassing 42 per cent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, which, for a movie of this scale, is basically a death sentence.

Disney needed strong word of mouth to carry Snow White through the coming weeks, but so far? Crickets. If people aren’t leaving the theatre raving about a movie, chances are they won’t be telling their friends to go see it either.

The marketing was absolutely grim

While people love to point fingers at the online drama, Snow White had problems way before the internet got involved. Every single piece of marketing screamed disaster.

The trailers? Yikes. The posters? Uninspired. The overall vibe? Just… off. Even the billboards couldn’t be bothered to show the dwarves, and the whole production design looked weirdly cheap for a movie that cost hundreds of millions to make. Disney didn’t even try to hide the fact that they had zero confidence in this thing.

And guess what? Regular moviegoers—people who aren’t following every online controversy—picked up on that. You don’t need to be scrolling Twitter to look at a trailer and think, Huh, that doesn’t look very good. Then the early reviews drop, and even if you don’t care about Rotten Tomatoes, a quick glance at a headline in your local paper is enough to confirm what you already suspected: This just isn’t worth the ticket price.

Sometimes a flop is just a flop

At the end of the day, no big conspiracy, no outside forces—just a bad movie people didn’t want to see.

Oh, and as one Reddit user pointed out, Disney somehow made a movie where the kingdom was peaceful under a man but completely fell apart the second a woman took over. Did they think that one through? Probably not. But at this point, are we even surprised?