Disney’s live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid is pulling in the cash in its launch week. It grabbed $95.5 million for the three-day and $117.5 million for the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend domestically. Overseas it is just a regular weekend and it added $68.3 million to that total. however, as is traditional for movies featuring a person of color in a leading role, The Little Mermaid completely bombed in China and scraped in just $2.5 million. It probably cost Disney that in subtitles or dubbing, promotion, and distribution out there.
There is a gap developing between critics and audiences. U.S. audiences are responding well, with a CinemaScore A grade and a verified 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics scored it in the mid-60s. According to the aggregators, strange voting activity has been detected which is indicative of review bombing. Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, and Allocine all highlighted an unusual distribution of scores which has led to them issuing advisories. As IMDb says:
“When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system”.
Fast X passed the $500 million mark globally with another $22.9 million for the three-day weekend this week, a 66% fall from debut week. It pulled in $28.5 million for the four-day. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 went past $730 million worldwide with a $24.3 million four-day. The Super Mario Bros. Movie incredibly hung on for fourth spot at the box office with $6.2 million.
Still to come this summer we have the potential heavy box office hitters of Transformers Rise Of The Beasts, The Flash, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part I. The release schedule then calms down a bit before a Timothy Chalamet-themed fall season, split between Wonka and Dune Part Two.
Check back every day for movie news and reviews at the Last Movie Outpost
