While Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” broke the bank at the weekend box office earning top honors, Disney’s live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” sunk in comparison to its previous similar tentpole films.
That’s according to box office analysts who noted the rarity of a Disney film based on a popular animated musical making a less than stellar showing over the Memorial Day holiday period, while also beckoning the question as to whether or not the Walt Disney Company’s woke policies are coming back to bite them.
That’s while Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse earned a whopping $120.5 million Memorial Day weekend opening, the best start for a summer tentpole year-to-date. Its opening day alone took in $51.7 million alone, the biggest single-day gross to date for a movie in 2023. That number even beats Disney/Marvel Studio’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which was released on May 5 and grossed $48.1 million.
Meanwhile, reports are that The Little Mermaid’s numbers are ultimately looking particularly troubling overseas. The film is expected to earn approximately $300 million in the United States/Canada compared to $260 million abroad. Considering the reported $250 million production cost and its $140 million global marketing campaign, Mermaid looks to likely only break even or could even take a loss of close to $20 million. It certainly looks unlikely to make the $1 billion mark that past Disney remakes like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin did.
Controversy has surrounded Disney’s The Little Mermaid for the last couple of years as some have criticized the live adaptation’s “woke” story changes. Those criticisms have included alterations to the lyrics from classic songs (specifically actress Awkwafina’s rap song The Scuttlebutt) to the racial recasting of what was the original fair-skinned character of Ariel from the original Danish story. Directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Mary Poppins Returns) this Disney interpretation stars Halle Bailey as Ariel, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, and Jonah Hauer-King as Price Eric.
Strong reactions to the movie have even led the film/television online database IMDb (Internet Movie Database) to step in and post the following warning label: “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.”
Still, others haven’t necessarily lambasted the film. For his part, well-known right-leaning critic Christian Toto from Hollywood in Toto didn’t whole-heartedly object to it.
Controversies have plagued The Walt Disney Company and its brand for the last couple years, with many lifelong Disney fans exclaiming their dislike of the company’s burgeoning “wokeness.” As a longtime family-friendly brand, critics have accused the company of being too inclusive and including adult-themed sexualization and homosexuality in their films. This, they say, devalues the Disney brand. A specific example of a “woke” move in its movies includes the company’s decision to incorporate a same-sex kiss in Pixar’s latest Toy Story installation.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that big studio franchise films can still thrive in an age of streamers and on-demand releases. For its part, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse put spider mania in full gear both domestically and internationally. Besides drawing huge crowds, it earned an A from market research firm CinemaScore and an 82 percent definite recommendation from polling service Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak audiences.