THE LITTLE MERMAID | 271.5M overseas | 569.6M worldwide

[Issac Newton]

Mermaid opens with a weak $2.5M in China. Compared to the China openings for other Disney remakes or reimaginings, that’s:

• -95% below The Lion King ($54.1M)
• -94% below The Jungle Book ($48.8M)
• -94% below Beauty and the Beast ($44.5M)
• -86% below Aladdin ($18.5M)

[Taruseth]

3 minutes ago, Godzilla said:

I dont see it doing much in Japan honestly and there's a lot of competition coming up with Spider Man going after young kids and then Transformers, ofc The Flash and Elemental. I dont think $200M is a lock yet lets see next weekend hold.

 

26 minutes ago, Issac Newton said:

‘The Little Mermaid’ Splashes To $164M Global Bow, But There’s Something Fishy Overseas As Disney Pic Beset By Review-Bombing

Refresh for latest…: Disney’s live-action take on The Little Mermaid is doing swimmingly at the domestic box office, with a three-day opening of $95.5M and a four-day projection of $117.5M. Factoring in the international box office bow of $68.3M, that makes for an estimated $163.8M global debut through Sunday. The offshore launch is lower than hoped for coming into the frame. But it bears noting there was something fishy going on in overseas markets with so-called review-bombing in such areas as France, Korea, Germany and beyond.

 

While the Rob Marshall-directed update has a 95% verified audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, film ratings websites overseas, including IMDB in the UK, Brazil and Mexico as well as AlloCiné in France, posted advisories during the rollout when negative user reviews appeared in questionable abundance.

 

As we noted in our global preview, The Little Mermaid was expected to be more of a domestic play at the outset. However, it’s fairly astonishing to see these overseas reactions — largely believed to be led by internet trolls.

In France, where Little Mermaid launched on Wednesday, AlloCiné wrote, “We are currently observing an unusual distribution of scores which demands the need for caution. We encourage you to make up your own mind about the film.” While not unprecedented, this is a rare move. To be fair, critics at some respected outlets including Libération, Première and Les Inrockuptibles did not like the movie, giving it just one star.

On IMDB, a warning reads: “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.” That note appears on the U.S. and Canadian sites as well as those for the UK, Brazil and Mexico. 

IMDB says it publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. “Although we accept and consider all votes received by users, not all votes have the same impact (or ‘weight’) on the final rating. When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system,” the website explains. However, it does not disclose the exact method used to generate the rating.

 

In Germany, Moviepilot showed a rating of .7 out of 10 before The Little Mermaid release – far lower than any comp title. Traction increased throughout the weekend, moving to a 5 rating.

Some gripes have been about murky lighting or even just the why of it all when remaking a classic. In some pockets of the world, there has sadly been racially-tinged commentary.

 

Korea’s SBS News reported heading into the weekend that the film had been subject to “ratings terrorism” in an article whose title Korean entertainment website Zapzee translated to “Backlash Against ‘Black Mermaid’: Appearance Ridiculed, Ratings Drop on Day One.” 

 

On the ratings portal of Korea’s Naver over the past several days, there had been a trend of negative reviews receiving hundreds of likes, and positive reviews getting hundreds of thumbs down. On the day of release, the score was 1.96, which has since evolved to 6.67.

 

Many ultimately have praised Halle Bailey’s performance.

 

And, in China, it’s just a disaster. There is no audience score on Maoyan, unusual for a film already in release for several days. The box office through Sunday is a dismal RMB 17.7M ($2.5M) with Maoyan projecting a full run of about $4M. 

 

Here are the Top 5 markets on the movie at open: Mexico ($8.5M), UK ($6.3M), Italy ($4.7M), Brazil ($4M) and Australia ($4M).

And then Germany with like a bit above $2M - just sad, didn't expect it to be such a disaster here.

215k adm according to insidekino.de predictions.

(TLK did 921k, Aladdin 292k, Dumbo 155k, B&tB 864k, TJB 460k, Alice II 199k, Cinderella 274k, Maleficent 359k were the other big Disney LA remakes).

 

So we could be looking at a potential sub $10m and a final total barely above (or maybe even below) the 4-day Oweekend of TLK.

[The Dark Alfred]

There's no two ways about it, this is an epic flop internationally. The why and a how is a debate for another day, but ultimately it is not a great film to hope it recovers from here. WoM and legs won't be amazing.

[Jiffy]

6 hours ago, MG10 said:

 

So like two cases in those past 25 years? The crouching hidden dragon or whatever was the name and Parasite which despite being the best film of the year and winning several oscaes grossed just 53M

Yes, also Demon Slayer was quite a success, but that's the question, out of any foreign-language regions Asian films have seen the most success/attention in the U.S. lately (although ofc that's not going to compare to the level of consistent success Hollywood has seen abroad as one of the chief cultural exports of the past 80 years or so). Meanwhile, the live action Disney films have consistently succeeded more in foreign regions (including Asia) compared to this one, so I think it's fair to speculate what's contributed to that.  

[kayumanggi]

68.3M overseas | 163.8M worldwide

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

1 hour ago, MG10 said:

 

Damn this time we (Italy) are really high, might finish in the top 7/8 biggest markets for this movie

 Which is an amazing feat considering that its gross so far here is lower than Dumbo, which ended up with 11M euros and was the least succesful live action remake.

So yeah, it's a huge flop here but apparently it's even more of a flop everywhere else.

Edited May 28, 2023 by ThePrinceIsOnFire

[John Marston]

What’s the likelihood this could miss 200m overseas? 

[Marcos12]

I've never seen TLM being big abroad, and it was strange when I saw  (north Americans) members of this forum talking about this film as if it were an event, a lot putting it among the top 5 biggest BO of the year, but I also didn't expect this colossal flop abroad , only $68m OS with China and all, it's terrible, TLM won't even reach what Black Adam made OS.

[Andy]

How much did Aladdin make international debut weekend? 

[JohnCarterofEarth]

12 minutes ago, Andy said:

How much did Aladdin make international debut weekend? 

$122M.

Edited May 28, 2023 by JohnCarterofEarth

[Noctis]

2 hours ago, John Marston said:

What’s the likelihood this could miss 200m overseas? 

 

Extremely low.

[Issac Newton]

Mermaid is last hope in Japan. Or else Disney will disappear as MCU can't produce numbers like Star War/Jurassic World and even Fast Numbers

 

What a tough time Disney is having in Japan because of their policies.

[Issac Newton]

$2.2M Philippines

$0.5M India  

[Issac Newton]

6 minutes ago, Issac Newton said:

The Little Mermaid

 

HK$4,851,918 OW

 

- Daily Breakdown -

05/25 - HK$863,977 / 354 shows (58 TC/147 SC)

05/26 - HK$1,824,276 / 406 shows (58 TC/162 SC)

05/27 - HK$1,086,177 / 429 shows (58 TC/170 SC)

05/28 - HK$1,076,513 / 421 shows (58 TC/177 SC)

$620K OW in Hong Kong // Daily Trends are terrible ~ #2 Start behind Fast X 

[Issac Newton]

Oceania

 

$4.00M Australia (lc 6.12M)

$0.57M New Zealand (lc .942M)

 

FYI, Aladdin - lc 7.985M at AU & lc 1.15M at NZ

 

So, behind Aladdin in Oceania too //

[charlie Jatinder]

Funnily enough, could see OS do more than DOM, with DOM now looking around 250-275M

[keysersoze123]

OS hold should be good as its doing well only in markets with good legs. Its BO is almost non existent elsewhere. 

[John Marston]

3 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

Funnily enough, could see OS do more than DOM, with DOM now looking around 250-275M

 

 

it would need extremely good overseas legs to go reach that amount. Right now sub 200m is not impossible  

[charlie Jatinder]

9 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

OS hold should be good as its doing well only in markets with good legs. Its BO is almost non existent elsewhere. 

Yeah, European markets can easily do 4-5x especially when weekend is deflated by weather. Asia is non existent.

[Issac Newton]

Thailand (Bangkok)

 

OD Comps

฿‎4.60M - Aladdin

฿‎6.30M - The Little Mermaid

 

OW Comps

฿‎39.00M - Aladdin (Pure TFSS - ฿‎34.4M)

฿‎29.04M - The Little Mermaid

 

Started OD above Aladdin and Finished OW below Aladdin. WOM is terrible