Live-Action Little Mermaid Box Office Surpasses OG In 1 Week Despite Underwhelming Performance

The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid has already outgrossed the original movie in its first week at the box office. The original Disney classic, which is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name, was released in 1989 and kicked off the Disney Renaissance. The new movie, which premiered in theaters on May 26, stars Halle Bailey as a young mermaid who defies her father King Triton (Javier Bardem) and trades her voice to the sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) in exchange for a pair of legs with which to explore the human world.

Per Collider, yesterday marked the day that 2023’s The Little Mermaid box office surpassed the original film’s total worldwide gross of $211 million. The film’s current total, a week after its premiere, is $250 million. Although this is driven more by domestic earnings than its lukewarm international grosses, it is still enough to earn back its production budget as well.

How is The Little Mermaid Comparing to Other Disney Live-Action Remakes?

In the domestic box office, at least, The Little Mermaid is giving a strong performance that places it squarely in the Top 5 among Disney live-action remakes. Its opening squeaked ahead of the 2019 remake of Aladdin‘s opening, which was also on Memorial Day weekend. However, it still fell below 2016’s The Jungle Book, 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, and 2019’s The Lion King.

Despite a modest start at the box office thus far, if The Little Mermaid‘s international numbers continue to stall, this could spell bad news for its overall prospects. Of all the Disney live-action films that have grossed over $1 billion, all of them grossed more in foreign markets than in the United States, namely both The Lion King and Alice and Wonderland, whose international grosses more than doubled their domestic grosses.

Aladdin‘s international grosses were just shy of doubling their domestic gross, leaving just Beauty and the Beast as the outlier with a spread closer to half-and-half. However, The Little Mermaid will need to boost its box office considerably to reach that point. The way it performs this weekend as it competes with the new release Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse could determine its overall fate in the domestic market, which will likely make or break its overall gross.

Source: Collider