Rachel Zegler may be gearing up to star in next month’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but she’s also signed on to star as the next live-action Disney princess with the upcoming remake of Snow White.
Just in, Disney has released our first official look at Zegler in costume, and she’s accompanied by the seven (CGI) dwarves. Check this out:
First look at ‘SNOW WHITE’, starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot.
In theaters on March 21, 2025. pic.twitter.com/C9OXfIMZG2
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 27, 2023
It’s also worth noting that Snow White has been delayed by a year, and has been pushed back from its original release dat of March 2024 to March 21, 2025.
No official reasons have been released as to why the film has been delayed, but fans speculate that it could have something to do with the SAG AFTRA Strike (which is still ongoing at this time), and the decision to have the dwarves be fully CGI. Live-action non-little people were said to have been cast in the film, but after some online backlash, Disney had opted to just have the dwarves be CG—possibly to allow the production to continue without the use of actual actors.
Though a lot of fans are already sharing how weirded out they are about the dwarves in the movie, I kind of get what the look is going for. The dwarves are their own kind of cuddly characters from the original film, and here it looks like they’ve been redesigned to look more like garden gnomes than little people.
If you ask me, I always thought it was kind of dehumanizing to have little people play a fantastical species other than human in a film (e.g, Willow, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Wizard of Oz). Maybe the CG dwarves are Disney’s way of circumventing the trope? Kind of like how they also cast Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa in the Wonka movie.
As of now, Disney audiences are still debating on where they stand with these new dwarves. Hopefully we get a better look at them soon. Snow White is set to release in theaters on March 21, 2025.
