The expensive Disney-backed ‘Little Mermaid’ should gross around $95.5 million for three days, around $118 million for four days. Is that good? Passable, I guess.
It definitely didn’t exceed expectations. Not close to Disney’s billion-dollar hits “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.” A possible worldwide total of around $500 million is now being projected for ‘Little Mermaid’. Before marketing, its reported cost is around $250 million.
Still a strong opening, but it only increased 10% from its raw Friday gross, and ended up matching Aladdin's Saturday gross of $30M despite having a $7M head start Thursday/Friday.
The daily holds over the next few days will give us a better idea of where it goes from here. The film garnered an A CinemaScore this weekend. So, audiences who did go to see it were not disappointed.
Meanwhile, critics had none of it when it came to this movie. THR reviews have been middling with a 67% RT score and a 59 on Metacritic.
The Rotten Tomatoes audience score seems to be overkill. We have another ‘Woman King’ situation on our hands. I understand Fandango wants to make the film look good, but at least be subtle about it. Most of the scores are 5/5 scores with very short "reviews" and then just a few scattered mixed or negative reviews included.
Meanwhile, “Fast X” is underperforming. It fell 66 percent in its second weekend, similar to “F9” in 2021. With a $500 million worldwide tally, it might match the $726 million of “F9” — which was released during COVID. With a budget of $340 million, I have no idea if it’ll make that much of a profit.