'Snow White' Live Action Remake Will Rethink Dwarf Characters

Rachel Zegler, an actress of Colombian descent, has been cast as Snow White in the upcoming live action remake. Despite allusions in the original story to her 'snow white' skin, Disney is proud to cast an actress with a darker skin tone for the leading lady.

Disney has created a number of live action remakes of their animated classics in recent years, though there has been mixed success. Both The Lion King and Aladdin live action remakes pulled in more than $1billion (£750million) at the box offices, while 2020's Mulan recouped less than half of its production costs.

If you want to see Peter Dinklage in his most well known role to date, then get a taste for Game Of Thrones by watching the trailer below.

While both Aladdin and Mulan had cultural consultants throughout their development, this had obviously different results on ticket sales. Following the casting announcement of Zegler, proving Disney's willingness to stray from the original movie, Game Of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage has spoken up about addressing representation in the movie.

While Dinklage is not involved in Disney's live action project, he still has very strong opinions on the representation of the dwarves in the film. Speaking to Marc Maron on his WTF podcast Dinklage said:

“Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White — but you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way, but then you’re still making that f***ing backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together? What the f*** are you doing, man? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.”

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter a spokesperson for Disney confirmed that the studio had been taking the advice of cultural consultants on the reimagining of the dwarven characters from the "earliest stages" of production.

“To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community. We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period."

At this stage little is known about what the reimagining of these characters will look like, though it seems we won't be seeing seven little people sharing a cave.

Topics: Disney