Snow White And America’s Niche-Culture Wars

(ANALYSIS) The math is bright red: The “Snow White” reboot was a box-office bomb in week one and things went straight downhill in week two.

It’s possible that, if Disney gets honest about the production and promotion costs, this movie could be the biggest and most painful elite Hollywood bust of all time. This Forbes piece may have been the most optimistic take out there: “How Much Does Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Need To Gross To Break Even?”

I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, I’d like to thank Rational Sheep readers for hanging in there with me during a month of really wild travel — the long journey down under (yes, including Hobbiton), followed by a quick turnaround for a Houston trip to speak at Saint Constantine College and the University of St. Thomas. This 70something scribe is still tired, but I’m over the worst of the jet lag.

The website didn’t shut down, of course, and I was able to write three posts a week instead of four. I sent all of these posts to the whole Substack list (free- and paid-option readers). We gained more readers than we lost (even two new paid-option supporters).

Anyway, I’m back home and will return to my usual schedule, with posts on Monday and Wednesday, the “Crossroads” podcast-post on Friday and a weekend “think piece.”

Again, a “thank you” to patient readers. Keep those comments and post ideas coming.

Now, instead of unpacking what worked and what flopped in the “Snow White,” let’s look at the bigger popular-culture picture — which is why an expensive “Snow White” for “modern audiences” was destined to be a bust.

You can read the rest of Terry Marttingly’s post at Rational Sheep on Substack.

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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.