US actress Rachel Zegler’s outspoken progressive views have repeatedly sparked blowback on social media. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

LOS ANGELES – Hollywood is re-evaluating its progressive agenda, with studios such as Disney and Paramount rolling back aspects of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) push that has defined the industry for years.

This follows a backlash against storylines and stars seen as too “woke”, as well as anti-DEI policies by the Donald Trump administration and a broader cultural shift towards conservatism in the United States.

But as the industry adapts, it is taking flak from all sides.

Disney’s live-action Snow White remake, which opens in Singapore cinemas on March 20, is a prime example.

A US$270 million (S$359 million) Disney tentpole movie would ordinarily be marketed with a globetrotting press tour, with the cast doing scores of interviews and attending multiple premieres.

Instead, the studio settled for a single, subdued premiere in Los Angeles on March 15. It did not invite any media outlets to interview the actors on the red carpet, limiting their interactions to photographers and an in-house crew.

This was widely seen as a bid to avoid further controversies over the movie’s 23-year-old star Rachel Zegler, whose outspoken progressive views have repeatedly sparked blowback on social media.

At a 2022 fan event, the American actress dismissed Disney’s original Snow White – the beloved 1937 animated film – as a dated fairy tale. She said there was too much focus “on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her”.

And after Mr Trump won the November 2024 presidential election, Zegler alienated more potential viewers by wishing, on Instagram, that “Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace”.

Announced in 2021, Zegler’s casting itself was a bone of contention. The actress is of Colombian and Polish descent, and some social media users felt she was miscast because the character is described, in the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale, as having “skin as white as snow”.

There was a similar outcry in 2019, when Disney announced African-American actress Halle Bailey would play the title role in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid (2023), even though the character in the 1989 animated version is white.

But while some might believe the new Snow White film and its star are too woke, others feel it is not woke enough.

In a 2022 podcast, Peter Dinklage, the American star of the Game Of Thrones fantasy series (2011 to 2019), slammed Disney for making “a backward story about seven dwarves living in a cave together”. He was referring to stereotypes about people with dwarfism, such as himself.

The film appears to have sidestepped the issue by using animated dwarves instead of real actors. But some in the dwarfism community say this meant seven fewer acting roles for its members, who already struggle to find work.

Lately, however, the House of Mouse is making more moves in the other direction.

In December 2024, it removed a transgender storyline from the Pixar animated show Win Or Lose, which debuted on Disney+ in February.

A character is still voiced by a transgender performer, but the few lines that referenced gender identity were cut from the script.

Explaining the move, a Disney spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter magazine: “We recognise that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

The retreat from DEI is happening off-camera as well.

The New York Times recently reported that Paramount – parent company of the Paramount film studio and MTV music channel – told staff it is changing its DEI policies, including for preferential hiring along ethnic and gender lines.

This is to comply with a new executive order by Mr Trump to end DEI practices in both the government and private sector, which, the administration argues, end up discriminating against certain groups.

Disney is making similar moves, as are US corporations such as Google, Amazon and PepsiCo.

But Disney continues to be one of the biggest lightning rods in the culture wars.

When its big-budget animated features Lightyear (2022) and Strange World (2022) underperformed at the box office, critics were quick to point to the controversial same-sex kiss in the former and the openly gay main character in the latter.

So far, early reviews of Snow White in the US have been mostly positive. But Disney executives are, reportedly, extremely nervous.

“They’re afraid of the blowback from different people in society,” said Martin Klebba, the American actor who voices Grumpy, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

At this point, anything less than a resounding box-office success will no doubt prompt a jeering chorus of “go woke, go broke” – fairly or not.

And try as it might to please everyone, Disney – and the industry as a whole – will be reminded that the audience is still the fairest of them all.