Walt Disney Studios, still reeling from the box office flop of its controversy-stricken “Snow White” remake, is pumping the brakes on a long-planned live-action reimagining of its 2010 hit, “Tangled,” sources told the Hollywood Reporter. 

“Tangled,” which is based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, “Rapunzel,” was already in active development with the director of “The Greatest Showman,” Michael Gracey, lined up to take on the project. The writer of the widely-panned “Thor: Love and Thunder,” Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, was recruited to write the script. 

The 2010 film — the first hit for Disney Animation after years of embarrassing failures — follows the story of a princess, Rapunzel, whose magical locks lead her to be trapped in a tower by Mother Gothel, who uses the young woman’s powers to keep herself young. After chance brings a bandit to take refuge in her tower, the princess is able to escape and explore the outside world. The film, which generated nearly $600 million and received an Oscar nomination for best original song, was viewed as a smashing success and paved the way for “Frozen.” 

“Tangled” also was the product of many tangled years of development. Walt Disney himself had rejected the idea of making a Rapunzel movie, since he found the fairy tale too small and dark. Disney producers also had to sanitize the premarital sex-sodden Grimm’s fairy tale — which involved a prince impregnating Rapunzel with twins after multiple tower visits — by reimagining the prince as a thief who courted Rapunzel chastely.

Over the last 20 years, Disney has been steadily remaking its classic animated films as live action features that hew carefully to their animated forebears. Many of these remakes were giant hits, including “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” and “Aladdin.”  

Others, like the recently released “Snow White,” were less successful. The live-action remake of the Brothers Grimm classic grossed only $69 million domestically and $145 million internationally on a production budget of $270 million — and millions more to market. 

The film was bewitched by several controversies spanning from its “woke” approach to the seven dwarves to inflammatory comments by its star, Rachel Zegler, a Hispanic actress cast to play a character who was white in the fairy tale — as evidenced by the character’s name. In addition to expressing anti-Israel sentiment — despite sharing top billing with a proudly Israeli actress, Gal Gadot — Ms. Zegler also made remarks denigrating the cherished fairy tale’s most poignant moments.

Amid the slew of bad press, the studio punted the movie’s release to 2025, in part, according to Hollywood observers, to give Disney’s marketing team more time to repair the reputational damage caused by Ms. Zegler’s comments. The film eventually debuted in March through a series of tightly controlled red carpet events that shielded the actors from on-the-spot questions from the press. 

Things got even messier last week when Jonah Platt, the son of “Snow White” producer Marc Platt, responded to a comment on Instagram that criticized his father for reportedly flying to New York City to speak with Ms. Zegler about her online activism. Mr. Platt, in a since-deleted post, defended his father’s actions and reprimanded the young actress for hurting the film’s release. 

“Yeah, my dad, the producer of 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,” Mr. Platt wrote. 

Ms. Zegler found herself in hot water in the summer of 2024 when she shared comments on social media that appeared to egg on the antisemitic backlash to the casting of her co-star, Ms. Gadot, who plays the Wicked Queen. Shortly after Disney dropped the film’s trailer online, the 23-year-old star took to X to thank her fans “for the love and for 120m views on our trailer in just 24 hours” before adding on the seemingly unrelated message: “always remember, free Palestine.” 

She also drummed up controversy as early as 2023 when, during a series of interviews, she criticized the Disney classic film for furthering sexist tropes. In one conversation, Ms. Zegler described the dynamic between Snow White and Prince Charming as “weird” and denounced the original plotline for being focused on “a love story with a guy who literally stalks her.” In another interview she called the story’s plotline “extremely outdated.” 

The younger Mr. Platt claimed that “her actions clearly hurt the film’s box office.” He added that “Free speech does not mean you’re allowed to say whatever you want in your private employment without repercussions. Tens of thousands of people worked on that film and she hijacked the conversation for her own immature desires at the risk of all the colleagues and crew and blue collar workers who depend on that movie to be successful. Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged.”

The failure of “Snow White” came on the heels of a lackluster performance by the 2023 live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” which was dogged by racist attacks, largely from China and South Korea, on Disney for casting a black actress, Halle Bailey, in the lead role. “Tangled” has  potential minefields related to gender roles and premarital sex — or lack thereof.

While the animated film managed to overcome Walt Disney’s concerns about “darkness,” the grim nature of the story — a maiden locked alone in a tower, being visited in secret by a man — along with its “smallness” (the core story only has three characters) will be harder to overlook in a live action version. Perhaps more significantly, Disney could face controversy over how it casts the Rapunzel character.

Two other Disney live-action remakes are too far along to pause. Next up on the docket is the live-action remake of “Lilo and Stitch” — which will premier this spring — as well as a revival of the hit 2016 film “Moana,” come July 2026. Both original animated films involved characters of color, allowing Disney to avoid race-related casting controversies.

The trailer for “Lilo and Stitch,” released in March, received in 24 hours the second most views of any Disney live-action trailer, and the movie has cast native Hawaiians to play the Hawaiian family from the 2002 animated film. Catherine Laga’aia, the Australian actress who plays Moana in the upcoming live-action remake, is of Samoan heritage.