Snow White box office hurt by Rachel Zegler’s political comments, claims producer’s son: ‘Free speech does not mean…’ | Hollywood

The release of Disney‘s remake of Snow White has been marred with controversies. From reports of the film’s two leads, Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, feuding to the scaled-down press interviews, the film has performed below expectations at the box office. (Also read: What did Rachel Zegler say about Snow White? Controversy explained amid film’s sleepy box office start)

Rachel Zegler’s pro-Palestine remarks contributed to tensions between the Snow White co-stars as Gal Gadot, who is an Israeli, faced death threats. Amid the discussion on Rachel Zegler’s comments on the Israel- Palestine conflict, now Jonah Platt, son of Snow White producer Marc Platt, has criticized Rachel for making political comments that have hurt the film’s box office performance. Even though he deleted the comment soon after, it has been widely shared on social media.

Rachel Zegler criticised by producer’s son

Jonah responded to a comment on one of his posts when an Instagram user asked about a recent Variety report which claimed that his father questioned Rachel Zegler for her political comments. In response, Jonah commented, “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.”

‘Narcissism is not something to be coddled’

The comment further read, “This is called adult responsibility and accountability. And her actions clearly hurt the film’s box office. 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.”

Mounted on $250 million budget, Snow White saw a sharp dip in collections during the week after an opening haul $43 million, which was below the expectations of $50+ million.