After months of not being allowed to criticize the live-action “Little Mermaid” for fear of being called some -ist or -phobe, the media is finally admitting that the film did not do all that well.
The movie only made $298 million domestically and about $569 million globally. That might sound like a lot, but the film cost Disney $240 million to produce and allegedly another $140 million to market. Usually, the “break-even” number is twice the cost of the film, so around $480-$500 million. But when you add in the marketing, theater cuts, and residuals, the film likely didn’t even break even, or if it made any profit, it was marginal.
Now that it is trendy to hate on Disney (thanks to the Hollywood strike situation), the mainstream media is now admitting to the likely failure of the live-action “Little Mermaid” film.
While the movie itself was not a bad one, some of the changes and new songs didn’t excite some people, even with the ridiculous amount of marketing and promotion Disney paid. But there are reasons outside of race-swapping the lead character that came into play. One of the reasons I heard repeatedly was, “I’m sick of Disney’s live-action remakes.”
Now Disney is pushing back their trainwreck “Snow White” live-action remake. But this all comes behind rumors of even more live-action remakes like “Frozen,” “Tarzan,” and “Princess and the Frog.” In fact, I did an article in August listing all the live-action remakes that were allegedly in production, and there are many.
I’m sure Disney is hoping that an extra year of production for “Snow White” could salvage the film, but the budget is reportedly already at $168.2 million (after a $41.1 million tax break from the UK, where it was filmed.) Now that the film is being pushed back, likely with reshoots and CGI work, the budget will continue to climb. At what point is it just not worth the effort?
The good news is that you can say “The Little Mermaid” didn’t perform well and not get called a bigot. The mainstream media is out there reporting on it, too. It didn’t do well globally. Maybe people are just tired of Disney’s lazy remakes.
What do you think? Comment and let us know!
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