SEGOVIA, SPAIN – MARCH 12: Rachel Zegler at the European event for Disney’s “Snow White” at Alcazar … More
As Disney’s Snow White continues to bomb at the box office, Rachel Zegler is moving on from the embattled movie musical to her next acting job. Will it be in another film or something else?
Based on 1937’s animated classic Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, Snow White opened far below early box office projections for the film the weekend of March 21-23, earning $42.2 million domestically against a reported $270 production budget before marketing costs.
Starring Zegler as the title character and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, Snow White went into freefall at the box office over the weekend, earning an estimated $14.2 million in its second Friday-Sunday frame — marking a 66% drop in business from its three-day opening.
Adding insult to the film’s box office injury, Snow White dropped to No. 2 at the domestic box office in its second weekend in theaters after Jason Statham’s $40 million-budgeted action thriller A Working Man took the Disney princess movie’s box office crown after it reigned one weekend at the top.
Snow White, of course, has been riddled with controversies for more than three years, including the pot Zegler stirred when in an interview with Extra TV she called her film’s source material — the 1937 “cartoon” — dated and the prince a stalker.
Things got worse from there, when in August of 2024 Zegler posted her thanks to supporters on X after the debut of the Snow White trailer. In a follow-up message to her “thank you” post shortly thereafter, Zegler added — “and always remember, free palestine” — which rankled Disney enough to fly Snow White producer Marc Platt to New York (via Variety) to convince Zegler to take down the post, but she refused.
Responding to a post about the report last week on his Instagram account, Marc Platt’s son, Jonah Platt, ripped Zegler’s social media actions, writing, “You really want to do this? Yeah, my dad, the producer of enormous piece of Disney IP with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, had to leave his family to fly across the country to reprimand his 20 year old employee for dragging her personal politics into the middle of promoting the movie for which she signed a multi-million dollar contract to get paid and do publicity for.”
Platt’s post, per The Hollywood Reporter, was taken down a short time later, but not before enough snaps of it were taken to spread his message across the internet.
“This is called adult responsibility and accountability. And her actions clearly hurt the film’s box office,” Platt also said in his Instagram post. “Free speech does not mean you’re allowed to say whatever you want in your private employment without repercussions. Tens of thousands of people worked on that film and she hijacked the conversation for her own immature desires at the risk of all the colleagues and crew and blue collar workers who depend on that movie to be successful. Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged.”
Also caught up in the controversy was Gadot, the Israeli-born actor who served in the Israel Defense Forces and has posted support for her home country during the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
According to Variety, Gadot faced death threats, which prompted Disney to pay for additional security to protect the Evil Queen actor and her family.
Despite the ire Zegler raised with her comments about the original Snow White film and the “free Palestine” post, the actor wasn’t done with her pointed observations. Following some politically-charged post-election posts targeting President Donald Trump and his supporters in November, Marc Platt flew to visit Zegler in New York again (via Variety), and she agreed to let a social media expert vet future posts until the film’s release on March 21.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 15: Rachel Zegler joins Sneezy & Sleepy at the Allegra activation on … More
After ‘Snow White,’ Rachel Zegler Only Has A Stage Musical In The Works
While Snow White isn’t completely in the rearview mirror for Rachel Zegler — the film, after all, is still in theaters and the controversies aren’t likely to die down soon considering the film’s financial performance — she has at least one big role lined up for the near future.
The role, however, is not another film. Instead, Variety reported on March 14, that Zegler has been cast as Argentine political leader Eva Perón in London’s West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic musical Evita.
Per the trade publication, previews for Zegler’s Evita, which is staging at the London Palladium, begin on June 14. Evita will then officially run from July 1 through Sept. 6.
Zegler’s previous stage work includes her title role opposite Kit Connor in a Broadway production of Romeo + Juliet, which ran from Oct. 24, 2024, through Feb. 16.
The fact that Zegler is not doing another movie is a curious development considering she instantly became a high-profile performer in 2021 with the starring role of Maria in director Steven Spielberg’s remake of the classic Broadway-turned-movie musical West Side Story.
After that, she appeared in a supporting role in Shazam! Fury of the Gods and starred in the lead role in The Hunger Games prequel movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2023, which was followed by key roles in the indie horror comedy Y2K and animated movie Spellbound in 2024.
However, as Zegler’s IMDb and IMDb Pro (a subscription service for industry professionals) pages indicate, she has no roles listed as “in pre-production,” “in production,” “in post-production” or “in development.”
Essentially, Zegler’s slate — at least for film and television jobs — is blank. The irony is that Zegler is as of this publication No. 1 on IMDb’s Starmeter, which is measured by the time users click on an actor or filmmaker’s profile.
In the meantime, the only way viewers can catch Rachel Zegler on the big screen is in Snow White, which is playing in theaters worldwide.
