As I remarked earlier a major factor in my hesitation to discuss the box office prospects of The Little Mermaid was the scarcity of useful points of comparison compared with other would-be blockbusters. (The most obviously useful analogies--other live-action adaptations of Disney animated classics--are few, and pretty much all pre-pandemic, in contrast with what I write here about Marvel Cinematic Universe films.)
Still, in the wake of the first weekend it seems to me that there are three points of comparison even beyond the prior live-action Disney adaptations.
The Little Mermaid is like Black Panther in being a Disney-backed film hailed in many quarters as a step forward for representation.
It is like The Last Jedi in its box office gross, at least at this stage of things, appearing a significant disappointment in comparison with its predecessors, all as supporters of the film claim that online trolls opposed to that step forward for representation are significantly at fault.
And it is like Ant-Man 3 in the film's underperformance, while being evident in the domestic market, being much more pronounced in overseas markets--the gap between anticipated ticket sales and what the film has actually made much wider there than at home.
Whether these latter two analogies will become less salient--or more so--to our thinking about the movie's run is something we will see in the weeks ahead.
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