Disney is making a live-action Snow White, obviously, with Rachel Zegler set to star
Marc Webb is directing the film, with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul writing new music
We’ve covered this before at The A.V. Club, but making movies is hard. You have to come up with an idea, you have to flesh that idea out into a whole story, and then you have to write down what people say and do, and that’s all before you get actors in front of cameras and have them perform the words. To streamline that process a little bit, Disney has decided to try out a wild new idea: live-action remakes of old animated films. The hard work is already done, you just have to put people in front of a camera and use CG to recreate some of the Beasts and talking animals that would be hard to do without animation. Really, it’s a wonder that Disney doesn’t do this constantly, for all of its old animated classics, no matter how pointless or inferior the remake ends up being!
The latest Disney movie to get this treatment—err, the first Disney movie to get this treatment, because we’re pretending this isn’t the hundredth time Disney has pulled this scam—is Walt Disney’s 1938 classic Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, a movie about a woman who gets some roommates and then eats bad fruit and takes a nap. According to Deadline, Disney has even already cast the lead for Snow White, with upcoming West Side Story star Rachel Zegler signing on for the film. Marc Webb, who used to make movies exclusively about webs until he moved over to mostly doing TV a few years ago, will be directing Snow White. In a statement, Webb said that Zegler’s “extraordinary vocal abilities are just the beginning of her gifts” and that “her strength, intelligence, and optimism will become an integral part of rediscovering the joy in this classic Disney fairytale.”
The film will also feature new songs written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul from La La Land and The Greatest Showman, with Deadline’s insiders saying that Disney has so far held off on doing a live-action Snow White because it wants to make sure it has good songs ready to go. The movie is still a ways off, though, with Deadline also saying that production won’t even start until next year. Also, no word on if this live-action remake will make any plot changes, but this is a prime opportunity to make some ride-friendly tweaks to the narrative.