The Death of Snow White

Disney's live action 'Snow White' had been in cinemas for about six weeks when 'The Death of Snow White' opened in the US on 2 May 2025, made for reportedly around a two hundredth of its budget, according to Variety. It started as a commission: an executive producer Jason Brooks had worked with before, whose daughter Sanae Loutsis would end up in the lead, asked him for his own take on the story. Brooks, an actor and effects artist, agreed as long as he could do it his way, and wrote it with Naomi Mechem-Miller as a bloody return to the Brothers Grimm.

Snow White is a kind princess, loved by the people and secretly in love with Prince Florizel (Tristan Nokes) from a neighbouring kingdom. Her stepmother, the Evil Queen (Chelsea Edmundson), is obsessed with her own looks: she practises dark magic, experiments on innocent women to stay young and keeps a magic mirror that only feeds her vanity.

When the queen decides the girl has to go, Snow White runs into a forest full of creatures and ends up with a band of dwarfs who have little in common with the cartoon ones. These are warriors and cold blooded killers nobody wants to cross, and the queen has no intention of letting her get away.

Brooks wanted a world of its own, in the spirit of eighties fantasy adventures like 'Willow' and 'The Neverending Story', and did the gore with practical effects. The dwarfs are played by actors with dwarfism, some of them stunt performers, whom he asked for characters rather than caricatures. It mattered to the writers personally: Mechem-Miller's father had dwarfism too. It was shot in summer 2024 in Woodinville, near Seattle.

Reviews were more positive than negative: most critics enjoyed the blood and the crew's enthusiasm, and plenty felt it could lose some of its near two hours. In the UK it's available on Prime Video.

• Fantasy
• Horror
• Action