What was the budget of Snow White (in millions)?

The budget of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was $1.5 million. That extraordinary cost made the 1937 film one of the riskiest projects in animation history.

Walt Disney initially estimated that the feature could be made for about $250,000, roughly ten times the cost of a typical Silly Symphony short. As production expanded, the studio invested in detailed character animation, elaborate backgrounds, music, and the multiplane camera. The final production cost is also reported more precisely as $1,488,422.74, which is conventionally rounded to $1.5 million.

The escalating budget led industry skeptics to call the project “Disney’s Folly,” and Disney mortgaged his house while seeking additional financing. The gamble paid off: the film earned more than $8 million during its initial worldwide release and helped finance Disney’s new Burbank studio. A common mix-up is confusing the original estimate with the final budget; $250,000 was the early projection, not the completed film’s cost.