It’s a battle royal between Amanda Bynes, Lily Collins, Kristen Stewart and Rachel Zegler!
Usually when Disney put out one of its live-action-ish remakes of an animated classic – something it’s done more or less annually for most of the past decade – the movie is competing against people’s memories of the original cartoon, or more often coasting off of the earlier film’s sterling reputation. But Disney’s new version of Snow White has come along far enough into the cycle that it’s also potentially competing with other live-action versions of the same fairy-tale story, two of which were pretty clearly greenlit in the wake of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland hitting it big back in 2010.
None of these movies were as massive as the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and that’s still the obvious inspiration for the new film with Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot (playing Snow White and the Evil Queen, respectively). But unlike movies featuring talking animals or extensive fantastical wish-granting, there’s less of an inherent advantage in animating Snow White; the 1937 original is a landmark classic, of course, but it’s not impossible to tell this story in live-action. The 2025 Snow White borrows some elements, whether consciously or coincidentally, from other 21st century retellings. Most of them have their virtues, but at the same time, plenty of audiences won’t want to watch four different live-action Snow Whites. As always, Version Control is here to help! Here’s a chronological sum-up of post-millennial live-action Snow Whites, followed by a definitive recommendation of which one is best.
Would you believe that Amanda Bynes was on the live-action princess beat well before Disney got there? Well, sort of: Sydney White, a campus-comedy version of Snow White that was, I swear, originally titled Sydney White and the Seven Dorks, did predate Disney’s fixation on remaking its own history, but seems most likely inspired by the mild success of Hilary Duff in A Cinderella Story some years earlier. Like that movie, Sydney White positions a former child star as an adorable yet relatable Cool Girl in Converse who triumphs over “evil” mean girls. It’s a clever-enough idea: In place of a wicked stepmother, college freshman Sydney must contend with a queen bee at a sorority that she’s rushing to feel close to her late mother; her exile from the kingdom is now rundown housing with seven geeky outcasts. But that’s about as far as the cleverness goes, because Sydney White feels vaguely embarrassed about its fairy-tale logline and mostly settles on being a regressive snobs-versus-slobs rehash; The House Bunny does the sorority-fairy-tale-comedy thing a lot better (“only vastly different,” as Anna Faris’s character would say). Beyond its lack of Snow White magic, any potentially funny jokes are quashed by the step-behind rhythm of the directing, which includes always holding the camera on Bynes long enough for her to make at least three different faces in every shot.
In 2012, what typically would have felt like a Disney-versus-DreamWorks battle played out sans either studio: Two live-action Snow White projects were released within months of each other.
