Forecasts For SNOW WHITE Have Been Dropping. What Exactly Happened?

Much has been written about the challenges SNOW WHITE faced on its path to release. At The Quorum, we don’t pay too much attention to buzz, whether good or bad. Instead, we look at the data. As far as we’re concerned, buzz is only meaningful if it impacts tracking. 

Regarding SNOW, the best comp is THE LITTLE MERMAID, which opened to $96M in 2023. SNOW was never tracking to open at the same level, though six weeks ago – at 42 days out – the data suggested that the film could open north of $60M. 

In the sea of tracking data, the one metric that is arguably most important is interest among young women. That is the demo that drove MERMAID and is expected to do the same for SNOW. At 42 days from release, interest among women under 35 was at 58%, eight points lower than MERMAID at 66%. 

A few stories emerge from this chart. The first thing you notice is that the gap between the two films grew over time. The 8% gap at 42 days out doubled to 16% by the day of release. The delta between the two films was the result of two things. Interest among women under 35 grew from 66% to 68% for MERMAID, whereas interest shrank for SNOW from 58% to 52%. It was at the 14-day out period when the erosion in interest began to fall sharply for SNOW.

Consequently, it was at 14 days out when the forecast for SNOW began to drop. And quickly. 

It’s not uncommon for interest in a demo to rise and fall. The impact of falling interest can be diminished if a film targets multiple demos. The danger arises when a film is reliant on a single demo to succeed. And when it’s that demo that shows erosion, the impact can be pretty severe. What looked like a $60M+ opening just two weeks ago began to look like a $40M+ debut.