Gal Gadot blamed anti-Israel sentiment for the box office failure of the new politically correct live-action remake of Disney’s Snow White.
The movie was dogged by controversies, many of them involving the leading lady Rachel Zegler, who came under fire for polarizing public statements including ‘free Palestine’ and her denunciations of the original animated feature she was remaking.
Zegler’s casting itself was a hot button issue, as she did not physically fit the original Grimm’s fairy tale description of her character as having ‘skin as white as snow.’
The seven dwarfs also became a source of debate – seven little people were initially cast, but then after criticism from Peter Dinklage they were replaced with actors of varying physical descriptions ‘to avoid reinforcing stereotypes,’ leading to another backlash that prompted Disney to go back to seven dwarfs but now in CGI.
However Gadot, 40, an Israeli who served in the IDF in accordance with the draft and has been an outspoken advocate of her country, has now indicated that she feels opposition to Israel caused her movie to flop.
‘I was sure this movie was going to be a huge hit. And then…it happened,’ said Gadot, referring to October 7, in an interview in Israel that has gone viral.
Gal Gadot blamed anti-Israel sentiment for the box office failure of the new politically correct live-action remake of Disney’s Snow White; pictured at this year’s Oscars
‘And you know, this happens a lot in various industries, including Hollywood. There’s pressure on celebrities to speak against Israel,’ she argued.
Speaking to an audience of people, she said that ‘I can always explain and try to give context about what’s happening here, and I always do that.
‘But in the end, people make their own decisions. And I was disappointed the movie was so affected and it didn’t succeed at the box office. But that’s how it goes.’
Gadot insisted that she ‘really enjoyed filming this movie, really,’ prompting an audience member to slyly interject: ‘Especially when it wasn’t with Rachel Zegler.’
Rumors circulated last year that Gadot and Zegler were feuding over their divergent opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But when her co-star was brought up to her on Israeli TV, Gadot said: ‘I even joyed working with Rachel Zegler. I laughed, talked and had fun.’
In the run-up to the movie’s release, Gadot was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the controversies surrounding the project largely involved Zegler.
Jonah Platt, a son of the movie’s producer Marc Platt, even publicly slammed Zegler for her various political rants an claimed his father flew cross-country to ‘reprimand’ her for ‘dragging her personal politics’ into the film’s promotional tour.
Her initial casting as Snow White was a lightning rod of contention, as Zegler herself did not have the ‘skin as white as snow’ that the brothers Grimm had described.
In 2022, while promoting her then-still-in-development new remake, Zegler also made scathing remarks about the original 1973 animated classic.
‘There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird,’ she said of the old movie. ‘So we didn’t do that this time.’
Another controversy began in 2022 when Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage – who himself has dwarfism – denounced the percolating Snow White remake for having a ‘backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together.’
Almost immediately thereafter, the little people who had previously been cast for the movie were jettisoned from the project as Disney declared it hoped ‘to avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film.’
Other actors with dwarfism then fiercely criticized Dinklage to Daily Mail, arguing that he had reduced the number of jobs for actors with their condition.
‘It makes me so sick to my stomach to think that there are seven roles for dwarfs that can’t get normal acting roles, or very few and far between roles, and now they are gone because of this guy,’ said one of them, Dylan Posti. ‘Peter Dinklage is the biggest dwarf actor probably of all time but it doesn’t make him king dwarf.’
An on-set photo surfaced showing that the ‘seven dwarfs’ had been replaced by a racially diverse set of ‘magical creatures’ of various heights and appearances.
The photo was deluged with such a tsunami of online mockery that Disney initially denied it was genuine before finally confessing it was.
