All of the headlines suggest The Little Mermaid is a huge hit, but this isn’t remotely true.
The 2019 Lion King remake made $191 million domestic on opening weekend.
The TLM remake made $118 million domestic on opening weekend.
The Lion King finished at $1.6 billion with two thirds of that being international.
The Little Mermaid only took in $68 million international on opening weekend.
Napkin math says Mermaid will make $350ish million total domestic. If international percentage holds, that’s only another $200ish million.
Projected total? $550 million. On a $250 million budget, that’s a gigantic flop.
This is unfortunately cope.
Nothing I wrote was complicated, but I’ll dumb it down for you anyways.
Lion and Mermaid both cost 250.
Lion made 191 domestic on first weekend. Mermaid made 118.
Lion finished at 543. Mermaid tracking for 348.
Lion finished globally at 1630. For Lion, international = 2x domestic.
For Mermaid, international opening = 68. Only 0.57x domestic. Mermaid tracking for 546 globally.
546 is a much smaller number than 1630.
And this is 2023 dollars vs 2017.
To add more, 250 budget means anywhere from around 500 to 700 to break even. 546 is a huge flop and probably means they lost money.