‘The Little Mermaid’ Washes Away Box Office Competition with $117 Million Domestic Opening Weekend
In its first weekend, Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid dominated the box office.
Following its delivery in venues on Friday, the Halle Bailey-featuring film, a reconsidering of Disney’s 1989 energized work of art, made $95.5 million across 4,320 screens in North America, per the Related Press, which refered to studio gauges on Sunday.
Box Office Mojo reported Monday that the film had already surpassed $117 million grossed domestically and another $68.3 million made in theaters overseas, giving the film a worldwide gross of more than $185 million total for the holiday weekend. The Little Mermaid’s significant box-office opening has already rendered it the eighth-highest-grossing movie of 2023 domestically after one weekend, according to Box Office Mojo’s estimates.
who voiced Ariel in the original animated musical — said that she felt the tweaks made to the new live-action reimagining via new songs, new plot lines and lyric changes to memorable tunes were “very important” for the movie.
“When you look at our film, we started in the studio in 1986 and we were released in 1989. Times change, people change, cultures change,” said Benson, 61. “What matters and what is important changes. And, as a studio, we need to make those adjustments, and we need to take into consideration what’s going on around us. We need to be aware.”
“I do feel all of the nuances and small, slight changes here and there are very important,” she continued. “It’s very important to address what’s going on right now in our world and to make it effective for our period of time, where we are right now in this generation.”
Ahead of the film’s release, director Rob Marshall addressed racist comments made against Bailey, 23, online in 2019 following her casting as Ariel, telling Deadline, “I didn’t think that it was a big deal, casting a woman of color. I thought, ‘That’s an archaic way to see the world.’ ”
“When that controversy arose, from narrow-minded people, I thought, ‘Wow, that really feels like it’s coming from another century. Are we really still there?’ ” he told the outlet in an interview published May 17.Marshall, 62, went on to say that “seeing these young girls of color and young boys of color” admire Bailey’s performance in the film “was very, very moving to me,” as he linked The Little Mermaid’s narrative to the challenges some people face in the real world.
“It was interesting to me that this whole idea of prejudice in the world is really what the film’s about,” said the director. “[Ariel] teaches her father that there’s nothing to be afraid of with those who are different from you.”
