Conservatives really, really, really hate Disney. So much so that they’ve decided to go ahead and create their own take on the classic Snow White fairy tale. It’s sure to be a trainwreck, in no small part because a YouTuber is in the lead role.
Yes, The Daily Wire has just launched a new children’s entertainment studio and streaming service, Bentkey. From the app’s start, The Daily Wire has been upfront about its disdain for LGBTQ-friendly stances from Disney, which strikes me as self-obsessed, bizarre, and completely inappropriate for introducing your $99-a-year youth entertainment app.
Nonetheless, if you’re curious about Snow White and the Evil Queen, and you want to know what this “Bentkey” thing is, here’s what you need to know.
What is The Daily Wire‘s Snow White movie?
The Daily Wire shared a short teaser on October 16 for Bentkey’s Snow White and the Evil Queen, starring right-wing YouTuber Brett Cooper in the titular role. The trailer, which clocks in at 51 seconds, shows Cooper prancing around a forest, collecting apples alongside woodland creatures. “Once upon a time / In time a prince would come,” a singer bellows. “Once upon a time, but now that time is gone.”
“It’s a story about a princess and a prince, about beauty and vanity, about love and its power to raise us from death to life,” The Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing said in a press release. “It’s our own adaptation of an ancient fairy tale.”
Check out our deeper dive into the trailer for a scathing take on its first minute. In short, the production quality looks cheesy and cheap, with no clear capability to compete against a powerful and well-financed entertainment giant like Disney.
We don’t know much else about the film, just that it’s intended to premiere in 2024, the same year as Disney’s upcoming Snow White film. It’s unclear whether Bentkey’s first movie will launch near or alongside Disney’s brand new take. Nonetheless, Snow White and the Evil Queen will premiere as a “live action feature film,” so expect a runtime in the 90-minute territory.
Who is in Snow White and the Evil Queen?
At the moment, we know Brett Cooper plays the titular role, as revealed in the initial trailer for the film. Cooper hosts the YouTube series The Comments Section With Brett Cooper, which features videos such as “Country Music Is Too ‘Racist’ and ‘Misogynistic?'” and “Even Woke Companies Are Afraid of Liberal Cities.”
By the way, that’s Cooper singing in the trailer. In an Instagram Live segment, she gushed about returning to musical singing after a long break—and feeling like her vaccination status kept her out of show business.
“I walked away from acting after the COVID years,” she said, according to The Daily Wire. “I was so bitter about the entertainment industry, and about Hollywood. I felt burned out because I had been a professional actor since I was 8 years old—I loved it, but I felt burned during college, then I didn’t get vaccinated and … felt blacklisted in a lot of ways.”
It’s unclear if other conservative influencers will appear as actors, although it seems plausible. Matt Walsh recently made a cameo in a new Bentkey cartoon. So don’t be surprised if other Daily Wire stars pop up in this production as well.
Is Snow White and the Evil Queen a conservative film?
Yes. The Daily Wire is clearly taking a direct stab at Disney, and it wants Bentkey to become a conservative counterpoint to the conglomerate.
Once upon a time, a prince would come, but now that time is gone? Yeah, the heteronormative subtext is pretty obvious. In the parent company’s press release on Bentkey and Snow White, Boreing stressed that Snow White and the Evil Queen exists as a response to Disney’s “disregard for their own heritage” and “disregard for their own audience.” He complained that Disney diverged from Walt Disney’s storytelling formula by creating an upcoming Snow White film in which, per lead Rachel Zegler, Snow White is “not going to be saved by the prince” and will “be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”
“While Disney still uses Walt’s name, they’ve all but abandoned his legacy. Instead of telling stories about timeless truth, what the ancient fairy tales were all about, Disney’s new Snow White is an apology for their past and will expose children to the popular but destructive lies of the current moment,” Boreing said. “Which is why, in addition to announcing the launch of our Kids Entertainment company, I also want to announce today the company’s first live action feature film.”
Alongside the trailer, Boreing directly attacked Disney by claiming the entertainment giant used “their brand—a brand parents had been trusting with their children for generations—to indoctrinate those children into the LGBTQIA cult.”
Bentkey is clearly a spiteful project, and Snow White and the Evil Queen is its ultimate creation. The Daily Wire purposefully announced the initiative and the film on the 100th anniversary of Disney’s founding. There’s not much to read between the lines.
So, is Bentkey just conservative propaganda?
While Boreing tried to walk around the idea of Bentkey as a political entity, the studio and streaming service is clearly intended to be an alternative to a corporation that “pushes all the worst excesses of the woke Left,” per Boreing.
“Why the name Bentkey? Why not D.W. Kids, as we’ve been calling the initiative for the last year? Well, put simply: D.W. Kids is just too political,” Boreing said. “Bentkey isn’t about teaching kids politics. It’s about childhood and wonder and adventure. It’s about values and all of the things on which politics are built later.”
After showing off three initial Bentkey offerings, Boreing stressed that the team wanted “to curate content from all around the world that we would trust our kids with.” The children’s cartoon Chip Chilla—an obvious knockoff of Bluey—features a nuclear family with a straight couple who helps their kids “discover everything from world history to classic books and how to care for others.” Boreing called the show “a celebration of a deeply loving family that has a blast learning all of life’s lessons.”
Another show, A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay, is intended to “encourage kids in this fast-paced world to slow down and take a minute to wonder.” It’s obvious why Bentkey loves this youth program: It puts kids at odds with the world and stresses an us-vs.-them mentality that fits right in with the larger Daily Wire project.
So don’t be fooled. Bentkey might not be “teaching kids politics” directly, but it’s certainly presenting a right-wing bias through its entertainment. Fortunately, it’ll take more than a sub-B-level Snow White adaptation to establish a viable conservative alternative to mainstream entertainment.
Unfortunately, it seems like Bentkey has ambitious plans for more subpar films. When asked about additional Bentkey live-action movies in her Instagram Live, Cooper said, “This is just the beginning.” So expect more baffling productions in the near future.
(featured image: Bentkey)
