“The Little Mermaid” remake follows up on $110 million opening

The highly anticipated live-action remake of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” finally hits theaters this month and looks set for an impressive opening weekend. Deadline reports that the early box office for the upcoming feature currently stands at $110 million for the film’s four-day holiday weekend opening.

“The Little Mermaid” is looking for an opening weekend of more than $100 million

If the box office tracking holds true, the remake will fall behind last year’s box office phenomenon “Top Gun: Maverick,” which opened with a record $160.5 million for Memorial Day Weekend 2022. However, this would still place the upcoming Disney. is listed among the eight best opening weekends in the given holiday period. Deadline also notes that she has a strong female following, especially in the under-25 age group.

To put things into perspective, the original Disney animated film, which opened in theaters in 1989, grossed $84 million in its initial domestic run. Since then, its all-time domestic gross is $111 million and worldwide $211 million.

The new film comes from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rob Marshall (“Chicago”). It is a remake of the Disney animated film directed by Ron Clements and John Musker and inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s literary fairy tale.

It looks like May is going to be a big month for Disney. Opening this weekend is Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” director James Gunn’s final installment in the “Guardians” trilogy. The Marvel Studios film is also counting on a hopeful 110 million dollars.

Disney had an opening weekend of more than $100 million earlier this year, with “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” taking in $106 million over the three days and $120 million over the holiday weekend in February. Unfortunately for Disney, the threequel had a rough second weekend, dropping 69.9%, then 59.9% in its third weekend. The film has since earned $212 million domestically and $474 million worldwide. It should also be noted that Disney closed out 2022 firmly with 20th Century Studios’ Avatar: The Way of Water. The film has since grossed $2.3 billion worldwide and is the third highest-grossing film of all time.

However, Disney has had great success with big-budget live-action adaptations of films from their animated library. 2019’s “Aladdin” earned $355 million domestically and over $1.054 billion worldwide. That same year, the remake of “The Lion King” grossed $543 million domestically and $1.656 billion worldwide. The 2017 remake of “Beauty and the Beast” also did well, earning $504 million domestically and $1.2 billion worldwide. “The Lion King” remake had the biggest opening for a live-action remake of an animated film with $191.8 million.

Disney is not stopping at “The Little Mermaid” either, as live-action versions of Disney’s films “Hercules” and “Lilo & Stitch” are also being prepared. In April, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson also announced that he was working on a live-action remake of the beloved CG-animated film “Moana.”

We can humbly say that we will bring it #MOANAbeautiful story live action on the big screen!#MAUI he changed my life (miss you grandpa) and I am honored to be his partner @DisneyStudios to tell our story through the realm of music and dance, the essence of who we are as Polynesian people🪝 pic.twitter.com/CxJFKQewUS

– Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) April 3, 2023

This month’s big Disney release stars Halle Bailey as the titular heroine Ariel, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, Javier Bardem as King Triton, Daveed Diggs as Sebastian the Crab, and Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric. The film will be shown in theaters on May 26.