The Little Mermaid's Third Weekend in Release: A Few Thoughts on the Gross

In its third weekend in domestic release The Little Mermaid took in another $23 million--raising its domestic total to $229 million.

For those still drawing a comparison between the film and 2019's Aladdin this means that, where it was edging ahead last week, seventeen days on it is running about 2 percent behind.

Perhaps noise rather than signal (the fluctuations are slight enough that it could be edging ahead of Aladdin again this time next week), I still expect it to finish well north of $300 million at the least (with the vicinity of $350 million still plausible).

Not all that had been hoped for (the more in as $300 million is not what it was in 2019), it is still a respectable gross by most measures--and any North American underperformance slight next to the film's real problem, which has been in the international markets.

Still, the movie's international gross is now up to $185 million. And of interest is the film's (relatively belated) debut in Japan this past weekend, where it took in $5 million. This is, of course, not a spectacular gross, but it is worth noting that Japanese grosses tend to be less front-loaded than those elsewhere. (Thus did The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a big hit in that country, open with under $14 million on the way to a gross of nearly six times as much at present.) And Disney movies have been known to explode there, with Frozen an outstanding example. (Back in 2014 Frozen opened with a little under $10 million--on the way to a final take of $249 million, or well over $300 million in today's terms, which proportionally made it a far bigger hit in Japan than it was even in the U.S..)

A Frozen-like performance would force a rethinking of much that has been said of the film's prospects.

Do I actually foresee anything of the kind for this film? Alas, no. Still, even with a surprisingly healthy gross in Japan (for instance, if it approached the $62 million The Lion King collected, or even the $100 million+ taken in by Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin) the film still might not break $700 million. But in getting to the break-even point on this colossal investment (which streaming cannot do alone, that's why all those streaming projects are getting canceled right and left) every little bit helps.