The Little Mermaid Swims To The Top Of The Box Office

Walt Disney’s latest live-action remake of one of its animated classics, The Little Mermaid, was released in cinemas this past weekend and has dominated the global box office. In North America, the film opened to £77m ($95.5m) with another £55m ($68m) (via Box Office Mojo), and the focus really is on how small these numbers are against expectation.

The markets outside the US that take the lead are Mexico with £6.8m ($8.5m) and the UK with £5.1m ($6.34m). Compared to other remakes, The Lion King back in 2019 opened in North America to a massive £154m ($191m). Aladdin, in the same year starring Will Smith, gave us a smaller opening of £74m ($91.5m).

But the key difference here is that both films debuted strong internationally, Aladdin with around £74m ($91m), and The Lion King saw international debuts well over £80m ($100m), which had strong legs.

Is The Little Mermaid’s live-action remake floundering for Disney?

Credit: Disney

READ MORE: When Will David Ayer’s Suicide Squad Be Released?

The film opened in China with a very tepid response, opening on Friday with a small $0.52m and ending the weekend with a total of $2.51m. For comparison, Fast X, in its second week, took an estimated £13.7m ($17m) and now stands on a total of £90m ($111) as it heads towards week 3.

However, all is not as good as it seems for the House of Mouse and the release. The film has a massive budget of over £202m ($250m) and really needs a solid international performance to get in the black.

With Indiana Jones 5 and Pixar’s Elemental struggling with poor reviews, it may not be the summer Disney was hoping for. Elsewhere the UK box office sees Fast X continue to attract audiences to the cinema as the film took second place with another £1.68m ($2.08m) (down -62% on last weekend).

In third place, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 added another £1.22m ($1.51m) for a running total of £24.48m ($30m).

Have you seen The Little Mermaid this weekend? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you.

And if you’re looking for a VPN that’ll allow you to watch everything that’s available to stream on each platform, no matter where you are in the world, then PureVPN is the one for you! If you click the link, then you’ll be able to get 81% off PureVPN plus three months free!