Disney‘s first fantasy musical film in 2025, ‘Snow White’, is being criticized by netizens around the world even before its release. Due to some settings that differ from the original work, there were successive opinions that it “damaged the original work”, and negative public opinion was so strong that even the premiere event in the UK was canceled. However, in Korea, it has suddenly emerged as a highly anticipated film with the announcement of a collaboration with top actress Suzy, drawing attention.

UK premiere also canceled due to negative public opinion

‘Snow White’, which will be released on the 19th, is a live-action adaptation of the 1937 animation ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. As the 1937 original is Disney’s first feature-length animation and the world‘s first full-color theatrical animation, it has garnered extraordinary attention from fans and those inside and outside the industry since the planning stage.

However, the casting of Rachel Ziegler, a Latina with brown skin, as the main character Snow White, whose signature feature is ‘snow-white skin’, not only drew the ire of fans of the original work, but also changed some of the settings from the original work. Furthermore, Rachel Ziegler’s continuous criticism of the original work through interviews and other means further fueled the hatred.

This reaction was also reflected in the trailer, which recorded 11.88 million views in 3 months. 1.5 million netizens ‘disliked’ for the trailer, which is 30 times more than the 50,000 ‘likes’.

Conscious of this negative reaction, Disney made the unusual decision to completely cancel the ‘Snow White’ premiere event, including the red carpet, that was planned to be held in Leicester Square, London, England. It was decided to only hold a small number of press screenings and to minimize questions directed at Rachel Ziegler.

O‘Snow White’s ‘Suzy Power’ That Increased Popularity

‘Snow White’, despite such negative global public opinion, is considered a highly anticipated film in Korea. This is due not to expectations for the film itself, but to the public‘s favorability toward Suzy, who was chosen as a special collaboration artist for ‘Snow White’.

Whenever Disney releases a highly anticipated movie, such as Girls’ Generation‘s Taeyeon (Frozen 2), NJZ’s Daniel (The Little Mermaid), Ive‘s Ahn Yu-jin (Wish), and Twice’s Nayeon (Moana 2), they have been consistently releasing OSTs in collaboration with representative K-pop artists, and the collaboration between ‘Snow White’ and Suzy is part of that.

Suzy, who instantly raised the popularity of ‘Snow White’ in Korea, sang ‘Waiting On A Wish’, the main OST number of ‘Snow White’, which contains a message of hope and courage.

Suzy‘s music video teaser video, which was released on the 10th ahead of the release of the main music video, surpassed 520,000 views in just one day. The video was flooded with comments such as, “She looks more like Snow White than Snow White in the movie,” and “She’s the Disney Princess herself.”

Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.