Hollywood has recently been placing the blame on women when films fail at the box office. The live action Snow White, released by Disney on March 21, 2025, directed by Marc Webb, came out in theaters across the world. With a budget of $209 Million USD, Disney expected the film to exceed expectations at the box office, but as of right now, the film only brought in $43 million USD in the opening weekend.
Jonah Platt, son of the producer Marc Platt, has laid the blame for the box office failure on Rachel Zegler. In these accusations, he stated that Zegler was a narcissist for bringing her own political views onto set.
“My dad, the producer of (an) enormous piece of Disney IP with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, had to leave his family to fly across the country to reprimand his 20 year old employee for dragging her personal politics into the middle of promoting the movie for which she signed a multi-million dollar contract to get paid and do publicity for,” Platt wrote in a now deleted X post, “This is called adult responsibility and accountability. And her actions clearly hurt the film’s box office.”
This is not new, blaming women for things that happen in film or on stage performing. How is it that at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, Justin Timberlake rips open Janet Jackson’s top and she is to blame? Jackson’s career tarnished, while Timberlake’s still thrives? How is it that actress Mia Sorvino got blacklisted from Hollywood at Weinstein’s request after rejecting his sexual advances? Yes, Weinstein is now in jail, and will be for a while, but it took the entire #MeToo movement to put him there. It feels as though this is a system set up against women in Hollywood.
Out of those 95 who have won best director at the Oscars since 1929, only two have been women. While sexism in Hollywood is becoming more noticed, very little has changed.
You cannot singlehandedly blame one person for the failures of a movie. Blaming a single actress like Rachel Zegler has happened before. The Marvels, a Marvel film released by Disney on November 10, 2023, was a major box office failure. With a budget of $274.8 million USD, the film only made $47 million domestically, making it the lowest grossing film from Marvel Studios. Who was blamed for this failure? Brie Larson.
Many users on X, in now deleted posts, called the film a failure because of Larson. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro called the film “woke garbage” and criticized Larson’s Captain Marvel as “one of the worst superhero characters ever,” according to Forbes.
But this isn’t new information. As long as the silver screen has been up and running, women have faced atrocities in Hollywood. Stars such as Judy Garland and Clara Bow were horribly treated in Hollywood. Garland was forced to take drugs and later became addicted, according to Biography.
This is not a new thing, but it needs to become an old thing. The history of women being abused in Hollywood has been around as long as the silver screen has been shining. It is old and should not exist in modern day. Everyone should start supporting actresses, female directors, and even more women in general so that there can be a culture change, the abuse should not exist any longer.
