Snow White and the Evil Queen is an upcoming 2024 American fantasy film by the conservative media company The Daily Wire starring Brett Cooper. The movie is set to be released through Bentkey, the Daily Wire's subscription streaming app for children.
Background
In October 2016, it was reported that Disney was working on a live-action adaptation of the classic 1937 Snow White animated film, and in June 2021, Rachel Zegler was announced to have been cast as the titular character. This casting sparked significant controversy, as Zegler, a Latina, was portraying a character described in the original story as having skin "as white as snow." Additionally, photos from the film's set appeared to show that the seven dwarves of the original Disney film would be replaced by seven "magical creatures," including a diverse set of actors and only one actor with dwarfism. Past comments by Zegler about the original film, as well as the removal of Prince Charming from the storyline, also caused controversy.
The changes by Disney from the original 1937 film generated significant backlash, particularly from conservatives. Disney has been accused by the right of cultural appropriation and virtue signaling by casting Zegler as Snow White. Daily Wire co-founder and commentator Ben Shapiro knocked the lack of Prince Charming as an example of focusing on female empowerment rather than true love like in the original. On Fox News, hosts Harris Faulkner and Howard Kurtz accused Disney of going woke. In response to the photos of the seven "magical creatures," many online users also echoed the claim that Disney was giving into "wokeness," and even called for a Disney boycott in some instances.
On October 16, 2023, concurrent with the centennial of the founding of Disney, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing announced the launch of a kids' content service known as Bentkey, available that day. In the announcement, Boreing accused Disney of pushing "all the worst excesses of the woke Left" and abandoning Walt Disney's legacy—pointing to the controversy around the upcoming Snow White remake—and asserted that Bentkey would make "the next generation of timeless stories."
Announcement
Coinciding with the release of Bentkey, Boreing announced the production of a live-action adaptation of the original Snow White story, Snow White and the Evil Queen, in response to a supposed backlash around the upcoming Disney film. It will be the first feature-length production by the Bentkey brand and will star Daily Wire commentator Brett Cooper as Snow White.
The teaser trailer for the movie was released on X (formerly Twitter), and featured a song written by Boreing and voiced by Cooper. Boeing stated that the film would be about "a princess and a prince, about beauty and vanity, about love and its power to raise us from death to life."
The film is slated to be released in 2024.