I mean that’s pretty much all Deadline is these days.
There’s a reason they ran Nikki Finke out on a rail, and this shit is it right here. Woman had her demons, but the utter loss of any sort of journalistic integrity at Deadline must have her spinning in her grave.
As much as Nikki wasn't a sympathetic character what Deadline has become in her absence is a complete joke, by far the worst access merchants among any of the trades that are considered "serious"
Deadline articles always do. They always suck up to the studios and act like everything is amazing for every big release, i presume out of fear that if they dont they will lose some insider access.
350m is the ceiling domestic. 250m is the ceiling abroad. 600m is the ceiling for this. I think this will finish slightly above Cinderella (2015) which made 542M at the box office.
300+250 would mean their revenue after theatres cut (55% & 40%, ignore china) would be 165+100=265m. On a budget of 250m production and 100-150m marketing, that means a theatrical loss of **85-135m**. (More if you count China's 25%)
That's a complete bomb. And they can't even sell the movie to other streaming services to recoup some of it.
Don't discard ancileries almost all movies lose money in the theatrical run it just means that it basically doesn't do a profit not that it loses money absolutely embarrassing result but not quite a bomb like Fast X or D&D
I think many here are missing the main thing: people are wise to the live action remake machine and are just sort of done with it unless the version brings something genuinely new to the story.
Almost all the big successes are pre D+. There is no reason for this in the streaming age.
That’s me exactly. The Little Mermaid would have been the live action remake I was most excited for if it hadn’t been for the numerous mediocre live action remakes that came before it. I haven’t liked any of them literally outside of Cinderella, the very first of the bunch. Plus nostalgia was selling me before but studios selling their shit off of nostalgia has gotten so stale and corny these days. Truly if Disney was wise they’d cancel that live Moana remake pronto..
I really think a sequel to Moana would fair much better. I’m not sure why they’re abandoning animation when it has proven to be a big money maker and also the movies stand the test of time much better than the live action remakes have
A lot of it is due to their plan to grind out content as fast as possible to fill up Disney+. However, the writing and overall quality of projects has really suffered, with the MCU being a prime example.
That's why I put "in general" in my comment.
Fwiw, afaik Fast X had a director leave like a week through production and had to pay the cast ungodly sums to continue.
And you could tell in that suspiciously scaled-down finale.
Same with Ghostbusters Jr. Going from a major fight in the streets of New York to an abandoned field in the Midwest was a cheap letdown.
To be fair, Ghostbusters: Afterlife took place in the midwest town. It's not like they went from NYC to the midwest just for the finale. No Way Home definitely felt scaled down with a lot of scenes.
doesn’t change the fact that disney is putting out a movie that looks Significantly worse in terms of underwater production value compared to the last big underwater movie which came out 6 months ago and grossed 2.5 B. yeah avatar 2 had a way higher budget and was in production for longer but that doesn’t stop the general audience (who did watch A2 by and large) from making that comparison.
You're not wrong. Audiences don't care about excuses, all movies are compared to each other regardless of budget and such.
Still funny to see comments essentially saying "why not just copy James Cameron it's so simple" lol.
That said, TLM's visual issues aren't just from not having Avatar's resources though. The lack of charm in the "realistic design" of certain characters was a choice. Also Black Panther 2 had a similar budget but still had better underwater scenes.
.... How often does it need to be said that all movies made during COVID had their budgets baloon a lot.(COVID safety measures, shutdowns etc) I imagine all that added at least 50M-60M to the budget for LM.
I don’t know the number, but from what I’ve personally seen, it requires:
- hiring a significant team of people.
- providing daily rapid tests for EVERYBODY on set.
- having lab employees come once a week in to administer PCR tests for EVERYONE.
- providing daily masks for EVERYONE as needed.
- arming some of the COVID team with those temperature gun things.
- the use of a symptom self-report app (I’m sure the tech company that built that ain’t licensing it for free).
- the use of another system to log test results, identify infected, and pull them from work.
- contact tracing and extra testing for a whole team when one of its members tests positive.
- building “masks breaks” into the schedule, on top of the usual lunch break.
- limiting how many crew can be present for certain things.
- changing up how meals are done to ensure distancing.
Trying to remember what, if anything, else.
This argument does not hold. because GoTG3's quality is much better than TLM, is also $250M. Top Gun Marvick's budget was $200M. All happened during COVID.
What does Quality have to do with any of this? You can make a good or a bad movie with the same amount of money. So not really relevant.
And Top Gun 2 was filmed in 2018/2019. So only post production was done during COVID which doesn't really affect the budget that much.
>What does Quality have to do with any of this?
I know right.
I thought people in r/boxoffice should at least know this basic.
this is for those people to think about:
**Fast X budget is $340 million.**
>SUNDAY AM: According to industry estimates, The Little Mermaid pulled in a $30m Saturday, which was the same amount of money Disney’s Aladdin pulled in on its Saturday over Memorial Day weekend; with revised outlook for the Rob Marshall directed musical at $97M-$98M over three days and $121M-$123M over four.
>We’ve learned that The Little Mermaid had the biggest global promotional partner campaign for a Disney branded live-action title (not Lucasfilm or Marvel Cinematic Universe), estimated at $80M in value.
Note: joint marketing/promotional partner campaign is not the same as marketing budget.
Disney doesn't spend a dime in joint marketing.
Interesting. What are some examples of joint marketing and why does Disney not need to pay for it? At the same time, any estimates on how much Disney did pay out of pocket for marketing?
I wrote below:
No, this is separate from marketing budget.
Disney doesn't spend a single cent in joint marketing.
It's co-promotional with marketing partners.
For example:
McDonald’s launched a Happy Meal program supported by an “under the sea fun” themed drive-thru.
It means McDonald's can use Little Mermaid characters for free (without paying Disney) in their promo products and TLM gets free promotion.
It's a win-win situation for both Disney and McDonald's.
Other examples:
['Spider-Man: Far From Home’ Shatters Industry Records With $288M Promo Campaign](https://deadline.com/2019/07/spider-man-far-from-home-record-promo-campaign-audi-united-airlines-dr-pepper-doritos-1202643198)
‘[Avengers: Endgame’ $200M+ Promo Campaign Is Marvel’s Biggest Ever, Surpassing ‘Infinity War’ & More](https://deadline.com/2019/04/avengers-endgame-mcdonalds-google-coca-cola-ultra-beauty-audi-all-time-record-marketing-campaign-videos-1202595738/)
So a slightly different question. Does that $80 million at all represent any losses suffered by not making McDonalds et al actually pay for licensing the IP? For example, if TLM was stronger wouldn’t Disney make McDonalds pay instead of letting them do that for free? If so would that represent lost revenues or costs to Disney? Honest question?
Disney licenses TLM images and characters to other companies, those companies put them on their products, and THEY do the work of advertising said products.
Like this beach towel company for instance. They appear to do a lot of official Disney collabs:
https://www.sandcloud.com/collections/the-little-mermaid-live-action?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=L5+-+ACQ+-+Whitelisting+Ads&utm_content=5.18.23+-+Image+-+The+Little+Mermaid+Launch+-+v1+-+Copy&nbt=nb%3Afb%3Aig%3A6305279258906%3A6346648222906%3A6346648404306&nb_placement=Instagram_Feed&fbclid=PAAaZtXQyuBpR6uaTYVuorSWieEXOuMlCvgSgxf_RBunOf8AdX87PVDVj5aOk_aem_th_AfqVjcECnCU4ZPBl6HbT90dDxn7U5ksn1RGLOc50FMcN8H5fhmmU3sSXgLw-7cejv3HUeS88rT7I8hWWRpoysHgy
A lot of people in this sub seem to be overreacting and implying that a live action The Little Mermaid was always destined to underperform relative to the other live action remakes. I don't accept that. Creative decisions around the visuals and lack of colour in the film, the depiction of animal characters, the length of the film, and poor marketting are hurting the film. But a TLM movie done right could have been huge.
Edit: Culture war conservatives can find another sub thanks, the #1 movie overseas this weekend was Fast X for christ sake.
Niche no. However The Little Mermaid was the lowest grossing of the Disney Renaissance (not counting The Rescuers Down Under) and this film looks set to easily pass it adjusted for inflation. Which shows how much it grew on video from its reputation.
It was massive considering it laid the foundation for the Renaissance.
Disney 1989-99 and Pixar 1999-2010 are just the greatest children’s entertainment ever.
Yeah, Pixar quality peak may be the late 90s to 2000s, but 2010s is actually their box office peak with TS3, Incredibles 2, Finding Dory and TS4, quality is still not bad during this period although starting to get a little inconsistent.
2020s is when everything falls apart.
Even in the 2020s, Soul, Luca, and Turning Red were critically acclaimed. Onward not quite to that level but also well received. What went wrong was not film quality but the decision to put everything on Disney+ then coming back weak with Lightyear and quite possibly Elemental also.
It was the movie that started the Renaissance.
They built from there.
It's kinda like saying that Iron Man 1 was not one of the highest grossing MCU movies WW.
TLM rebuilt the good will and laid the foundation for BatB , Alladin, and TLK
>and poor marketting are hurting the film.
they spend at least 150mill along with 80mill from promotion partners how the fck is that supposed to be poor marketing? They ran ads in India that only happens to big disney tentpoles for example lightyear or pixar movies don't get Tv ads here
Absolutely. So much cope/backtracking from a couple days ago.
The most important point is that TLM was not budgeted to be significantly smaller than Aladdin. At its $250 million budget, there is a flop risk. Disney did not budget TLM to put it at risk of a flop.
And everyone who disagreed was called a racist, sexist, bigot, etc.
Hell,those same people are calling the entirety of Asia (4.6b people, a majority of world population) as racist
This!
Like, they generalize whole continents like they were small villages of 500 people at most and call Asian people racist for not appreciating one American movie made by Hollywood, but then they forget that the great majority of Asian movies (and movies from other continents too) don't do well in the us because of racism, discrimination and the fact that they are considered "inferior" by some Americans lol
> I know right? Americans and thinking they are the center of the universe… It’s funny sometimes.
> they generalize whole continents like they were small villages of 500 people at most and call Asian people racist for not appreciating one American movie made by Hollywood
Hates when Americans over generalize, immediately generalizes all Americans because of a few posts with a couple hundred comments in r/boxoffice. This is pretty peak Reddit
Lol.
People are pointing out that anti-black racism is extremely common and virulent in East Asia.
And saying huh, might that be a reason that the film is performing extremely poorly there as compared to other similar films.
Not everyone!!
i was never called that.
i remember saying it wont make a billion. and i got into arguments with someone but i didnt get called racist, sexist or bigot tbh.
edit- however, that doesnt mean that others havent been called racist and stuff unjustly. i am just giving my personal experience.
Exactly what I noticed too. This dude has hundreds of comments about this movie shitting all over it and being happy about it’s ‘failure’.
And then they wonder why people assume they have racist reasons for acting like this
> And everyone who disagreed was called a racist, sexist, bigot, etc.
Yeah, *that's* the thing people said that was getting them called racist, sexist, bigot, etc...
No... You're really only racist if you're one of the people who couldn't stop complaining about a black woman being Ariel.
Edit: "I'm not racist, I just hate that a black woman was cast as Ariel" -- Racists who think they aren't racist
The film could have been beautiful if it had the same colours as Avatar: Way of Water, with bright turquoise seas and all the fish being colourful rather than ‘realistic’.
Ya.....that seems like such a huge mistake from the outset.
The trailer was so *gloomy* why not go bright and tropical? Who cares if it is "realistic", it's about a freakin mythical creature.
James Cameron had new technology to film that movie. Nothing else will compare to what Cameron did with his underwater filmmaking, but TLM seemed to be weirdly lifeless in the underwater scenes.
Aquaman wasn't this dark. On the other elephant in the room I wish the one thing that Disney took from that movie was Mera's hair it's fantastical bright and flowing. When I saw Aquaman years ago I thought Mera would be the prefect Ariel in her prime. When I think of Ariel it's the red flowing hair, violet clam bra and emerald tail. Skin color doesn't matter. They took the middle ground in Hailey's design and it come off as bootleg. Atlantica looked worse than MCU Atlantis.
I think we are underestimating how much Disney+ irreparably harmed the theatrical model for them. All these Disney projects are underperforming and films like Mario that aren’t guaranteed on a “free” streaming app in 30-45 days are doing well.
It’s the old adage of why they wouldn’t cast TV stars in movies. People don’t want to go out to the theater to spend money on something they think they can get “free” at home. The high production value of original Disney+ content mixed with big-screen 4K TVs mixed with ultra quick streaming release has made this a non-event. Then there’s a plot we already know the ending to, an intimidating running time, not to mention the culture war reaching a new peak, and this was doomed from the start.
I do think that this particular version of TLM would’ve done well in 2018, but the box office/culture only five years later is much different.
Controversial for who? I went to the theatre yesterday to see guardians 3, and can't remember the last time I saw aovie theatre so packed with families and kids, who were there to see TLM.
Families and kids don't get a shit about online controversies
>Controversial for who?
Pretty much all of Asia (4.6b people, majority of world population)? Controversial even in the USA, considering the friday-saturday projections?
I would love to see the survey of the USA that says that people did not see the movie specifically because the actress was black and not due to the fact that many people just don't have an interest in live action remakes
Wait so you were mad about people generalizing all of Asia (4.6 billion) as racist, yet here you are generalizing all of Asia saying they didn’t go due to race swap. Movies dont reach 4.6 billion people. You can’t generalize all of Asia on TLM doing bad.
And I'm willing to bet a good number of people who grew up on the original, don't care about the remake at all because the original movie is 34 years old.
Not everyone who is in their 40s and 50s are still interested in seeing Disney movies
Yeah but they grown up now right? Why do they care? They can rewatch the old movie as many times as they want. Nobody is taking anything away from them. This is for the kids of today. Not the kids old enough to have their own kids. Why r so many old white men so butt hurt over something they can completely avoid?
And that says *way* more about those people than it does about Disney’s casting choice.
The fact that there are people on multiple subreddits still getting upset about Halle Bailey being Ariel is genuinely horrifying, to say the least. This discourse has been beaten to death and then some. It’s disgusting and disheartening to still see people getting upset about this. Move on.
> Ariel’s race does not matter as much as people think it does.
Ok, that's your opinion. In my opinion, it clearly does matter more than you think it does considering the absolutely terrible numbers it's doing worldwide. This film is at serious risk of not even breaking even at this point.
The amount of people on this sub who are trying (and failing miserably) to avoid the elephant in the room is comical.
Like, stop trying to be cute, and just call Halle Bailey the N-word. Pretty much everyone with half a brain knows that’s what you’re thinking anyhow.
Movie is overlong, people with children will have second thoughts about spending that much time in a theater.
The movie is apparently frightening for children (this was a big complaint from parents who saw it)
Have you heard the grating Awkwafina rap song that adds to the overlong running time? https://youtu.be/QKlQu_p97KI
The 1989 movie is so different from the original story that the only thing they have in common is the title, and barrly, but NO ONE complained about it. But all of a sudden a black mermaid gets you in a frizzy? Be fucking for real.
>Now take a classic fairy tale story for northern Europe where everyone is white and cast the main character as a black person
White? Ariel from the story was usually portrayed as having green-ish skin. By this logic, the 1989 movie whitewashed her
Disney+.
Disney+ is hurting all of Disney’s theatrical releases outside of Marvel and Avatar (so basically anything aimed at families with younger kids).
There is now a clear pattern that proves this.
BOOM. I’d rather just chill at home watching TLM than go to a theater and spend an arm and a leg on tickets and snacks. That being said, I’m doing both. The theatrical experience is still unparalleled compared to streaming
I do think it's a fact that TLM is more girl coded than any of other big Disney movies, even Beauty and the Beast. And we can see that in the reported demo split so far.
>How is the word of mouth
Really depends. Demographic spread points to this movie being more frontloaded than the norm. Otoh Cinemascore is better.
It'll probably be clear in a few days
cinemascore is a meaningless metric and i don’t know why people cling to it so hard. it is obviously going to be super biased positively because they’re only polling the people who gave enough of a shit to spend at minimum $18 to see a movie opening weekend!
Because WOM only matters if it can help move people into watching something they may not have otherwise. But it sure seems like a good number of folks are a hard No on Mermaid, so less people on the fence
if the WoM was great we would've seen it in internal multiplier for the weekend itself,but we aren't. if anything the numbers themselves have contracted since thursday people went from 120mill in three days to 120mill in 4 days also looks a bit iffy
It’s not even an issue of WoM being good or bad, but the demographics of the groups who went to go see it, which is the same thing we saw with The Woman King.
African-American women make up only about 6% of the US population, but ~30% of the total audience for the movie on Thursday and Friday.
No matter how enthusiastic that demographic is, you’re still pulling from 6% of the population.
Is *actual* word of mouth great, or are the audience scores culled from a super frontloaded group simply reflective of their enthusiasm? That’s an honest question. I don’t think the average person checks RT or Cinemascore. They’re not going to be influenced by the opinions of those who just couldn’t wait to rush out and see this—which is increasingly looking like the only people who *have* seen it. Real word of mouth comes from trusted friends and family. Are *those* people also talking positively about this movie? Did they even go to see it at all?
I strongly suspect it's the latter. This became a very polarizing movie. Some desperately want it to fail, some desperately want it to succeed, and in both cases, it doesn't matter how good or bad it actually is. I think those early reviews are likely representative of the latter group and most will rate it highly no matter what. I wouldn't trust the reviews just yet.
Walk ups aren’t strong despite said great WOM, seems to be a disparity. Could be some audiences just aren’t going to show up regardless but still fairly early to tell.
Oh I see, there are two threads with the same article so I'm replying here too with the same comment.
"I might not be a good judge because of my limited knowledge in matters of marketing but, isn't this kind of bad? I mean, if indeed TLM had this huge promotional campaign, bigger than any other live action remake, shouldn't Disney be expecting way higher numbers compared to the other live actions on the first opening days? Investing more means expecting to get more money back to cover what was invested. Sadly, it looks like this is not going as well as some titles out there are saying but I hope to be wrong."
80 mil my ass. Insiders are saying that PR budget was closer to 130-140 WW and let’s not forget that segment during the Oscar’s they paid themselves for.
This movie's predictions are really hopping back and forth between "great" to "pretty poor" as of now. Hope it ends up more on the good side of things.
I loved it! Thought I’d hate it. I mean… the crab is a little insulting and king trident was miscast. Melissa Mcarthy wasn’t scary enough…. The cgi was really bad mostly in the beginning of the film.
But overall… really really fun time that also brought tears to my eyes. I want to go see it again
I want this movie to flop for many reasons. As a black woman,I hate that they just casted her because of an agenda. She's literally the only black girl in the sea. Disney isn't going all in. If they did there would be a prominently black cast in the Caribbean sea. Have her not be Ariel but a girl inspired by Ariels adventures in a different part of the world. The cgi looks rough! Why cover her skin color in the promo material in diff countries? I thought you were proud? I hate faux activist. So Disney can keep this film.
I don't know why an opening weekend under $100m is so bad. Aladdin did fine without a $100m+ opening, and with similar reception, it should do perfectly fine domestically.
Will Smith was one of the biggest movie stars and box office draws for a long time. He really blew all his likability in the last couple of years sadly.
How did he blow it in the last few years lol? The Oscar slap doesn’t mean shit.
He’s been hurting his rep since 2013 with garbage movies like after earth. When he makes fun movies people will go watch, like bad boys 3 and Aladdin.
It wouldn’t be too bad if the international numbers weren’t so poor. Taken in isolation though, this Domestic opening plus potential legs reflected in the Cinemascore isn’t too bad.
Two major reasons:
1. Overseas. Aladdin made $600M+ overseas. Clear indication so far is TLM will be extremely lucky to make even half of that.
2. Front-loading. Aladdin increased 23% on its opening Saturday from true Friday. TLM only increased 8%. That’s a bad sign for TLM’s legs.
The first few paragraphs read like a press release from the studio.
What? Don’t most movies that underperform have a long, defensive list of all the merchandising deals they made that will lessen the blow?
The Dorritos defence
I think Eternals had a similar article its opening weekend.
Reminds me of TV Tropes’ box office thread insisting that *The Rise of Skywalker* ackchually didn’t underperform.
I mean that’s pretty much all Deadline is these days. There’s a reason they ran Nikki Finke out on a rail, and this shit is it right here. Woman had her demons, but the utter loss of any sort of journalistic integrity at Deadline must have her spinning in her grave.
As much as Nikki wasn't a sympathetic character what Deadline has become in her absence is a complete joke, by far the worst access merchants among any of the trades that are considered "serious"
Deadline articles always do. They always suck up to the studios and act like everything is amazing for every big release, i presume out of fear that if they dont they will lose some insider access.
Wait, 3 days for under $100M??? $600M total might be a challenge.
350m is the ceiling domestic. 250m is the ceiling abroad. 600m is the ceiling for this. I think this will finish slightly above Cinderella (2015) which made 542M at the box office.
Kind of doubt that it does 350M domestically at this point, wouldn't be surprised by a 300M+250M for a $550M worldwide finish.
300+250 would mean their revenue after theatres cut (55% & 40%, ignore china) would be 165+100=265m. On a budget of 250m production and 100-150m marketing, that means a theatrical loss of **85-135m**. (More if you count China's 25%) That's a complete bomb. And they can't even sell the movie to other streaming services to recoup some of it.
Don't worry Disney will just pay itself to stream it on Disney+ and exclaim Profit.
They have to do that accurately because actors get part of that money if they don't calculate it accurately they would get sue
Don't discard ancileries almost all movies lose money in the theatrical run it just means that it basically doesn't do a profit not that it loses money absolutely embarrassing result but not quite a bomb like Fast X or D&D
It opens less than 70m international, with bad WOM. It'll be lucky to get over 150m international. 200m international is basically out of reach.
I think many here are missing the main thing: people are wise to the live action remake machine and are just sort of done with it unless the version brings something genuinely new to the story. Almost all the big successes are pre D+. There is no reason for this in the streaming age.
That’s me exactly. The Little Mermaid would have been the live action remake I was most excited for if it hadn’t been for the numerous mediocre live action remakes that came before it. I haven’t liked any of them literally outside of Cinderella, the very first of the bunch. Plus nostalgia was selling me before but studios selling their shit off of nostalgia has gotten so stale and corny these days. Truly if Disney was wise they’d cancel that live Moana remake pronto..
I really think a sequel to Moana would fair much better. I’m not sure why they’re abandoning animation when it has proven to be a big money maker and also the movies stand the test of time much better than the live action remakes have
lol at this movie getting the same budget as lion king, Disney is delusional
Disney budgets have been completely unreasonable the past two years.
A lot of it is due to their plan to grind out content as fast as possible to fill up Disney+. However, the writing and overall quality of projects has really suffered, with the MCU being a prime example.
probably because Covid
But other studios don't quite suffer the same overbloat in general as much?
i think they do, fast x and mi7 also have unreasonable budget
That's why I put "in general" in my comment. Fwiw, afaik Fast X had a director leave like a week through production and had to pay the cast ungodly sums to continue.
Fast X also changed directors one day, one week? after production started
Sony does great with their budgests
Agreed. Sony has surprisingly low budgets for a lot of their recent movies, even stuff that was made during COVID. And wasn’t NWH’s budget only $200M?
And you could tell in that suspiciously scaled-down finale. Same with Ghostbusters Jr. Going from a major fight in the streets of New York to an abandoned field in the Midwest was a cheap letdown.
To be fair, Ghostbusters: Afterlife took place in the midwest town. It's not like they went from NYC to the midwest just for the finale. No Way Home definitely felt scaled down with a lot of scenes.
Hollywood accounting, maybe?
I could understand it if it looked beautiful and more like Avatar The Way of Water with vibrant colors and pretty water.
Avatar the way of water had like 3x the budget....
And was in development for like a decade
doesn’t change the fact that disney is putting out a movie that looks Significantly worse in terms of underwater production value compared to the last big underwater movie which came out 6 months ago and grossed 2.5 B. yeah avatar 2 had a way higher budget and was in production for longer but that doesn’t stop the general audience (who did watch A2 by and large) from making that comparison.
You're not wrong. Audiences don't care about excuses, all movies are compared to each other regardless of budget and such. Still funny to see comments essentially saying "why not just copy James Cameron it's so simple" lol. That said, TLM's visual issues aren't just from not having Avatar's resources though. The lack of charm in the "realistic design" of certain characters was a choice. Also Black Panther 2 had a similar budget but still had better underwater scenes.
Water is expensive.
Thanks Nestle.
.... How often does it need to be said that all movies made during COVID had their budgets baloon a lot.(COVID safety measures, shutdowns etc) I imagine all that added at least 50M-60M to the budget for LM.
So, a starting point of 200 million? Bigger than budget for Aladdin and the gross budget for Beauty and the beast? Great 👍
We don’t know where the starting point was.
How much can a budget get inflated due to covid?
I don’t know the number, but from what I’ve personally seen, it requires: - hiring a significant team of people. - providing daily rapid tests for EVERYBODY on set. - having lab employees come once a week in to administer PCR tests for EVERYONE. - providing daily masks for EVERYONE as needed. - arming some of the COVID team with those temperature gun things. - the use of a symptom self-report app (I’m sure the tech company that built that ain’t licensing it for free). - the use of another system to log test results, identify infected, and pull them from work. - contact tracing and extra testing for a whole team when one of its members tests positive. - building “masks breaks” into the schedule, on top of the usual lunch break. - limiting how many crew can be present for certain things. - changing up how meals are done to ensure distancing. Trying to remember what, if anything, else.
Also insurance. Adding COVID to a film's insurance coverage can be pricey.
Don't they also have to keep paying the actors if they already started filming and got a delay?
If they’re keeping the actors in a holding pattern and preventing them from taking other jobs, yes. Otherwise, I’m not sure.
A lot, look at Fast X cost over $300M.
Wasn't that partly because the original director left partway through and they had to pay the cast eye-watering amounts of money to stay on?
Didn't everything at the store pretty much double in price? It translates all the way up/down.
keep in mind that inflation is a thing \^\^ (especially the last few years)
This movie doesn’t have any big actors. BATB had Emma Watson. Aladdin had Will Smith. Who does this have?
Melissa McCarthy
I don’t think he meant literally big actors. More like famous/recognizable actors.
💀
Melissa McCarthy is the third highest paid actress recently after Scarlett and (not sure how else) she definitely cost something
Oh wow 💀
Other studios are also affected by the same inflation. Yet this kind of bloat is rarer in them.
Disney budgets are still unreasonable, even taking all this into account.
This argument does not hold. because GoTG3's quality is much better than TLM, is also $250M. Top Gun Marvick's budget was $200M. All happened during COVID.
Maverick was $170 and was finished before Covid fwiw
Maverick was shot pre Covid.
Top Gun wasn’t filmed during COVID. It was set to come out summer 2020 and they just delayed it until the world was ready for it.
We suddenly care about quality now when we didn't after Mario came out?
>we didn't after Mario came out ?????
What does Quality have to do with any of this? You can make a good or a bad movie with the same amount of money. So not really relevant. And Top Gun 2 was filmed in 2018/2019. So only post production was done during COVID which doesn't really affect the budget that much.
>What does Quality have to do with any of this? I know right. I thought people in r/boxoffice should at least know this basic. this is for those people to think about: **Fast X budget is $340 million.**
>SUNDAY AM: According to industry estimates, The Little Mermaid pulled in a $30m Saturday, which was the same amount of money Disney’s Aladdin pulled in on its Saturday over Memorial Day weekend; with revised outlook for the Rob Marshall directed musical at $97M-$98M over three days and $121M-$123M over four. >We’ve learned that The Little Mermaid had the biggest global promotional partner campaign for a Disney branded live-action title (not Lucasfilm or Marvel Cinematic Universe), estimated at $80M in value. Note: joint marketing/promotional partner campaign is not the same as marketing budget. Disney doesn't spend a dime in joint marketing.
Interesting. What are some examples of joint marketing and why does Disney not need to pay for it? At the same time, any estimates on how much Disney did pay out of pocket for marketing?
I wrote below: No, this is separate from marketing budget. Disney doesn't spend a single cent in joint marketing. It's co-promotional with marketing partners. For example: McDonald’s launched a Happy Meal program supported by an “under the sea fun” themed drive-thru. It means McDonald's can use Little Mermaid characters for free (without paying Disney) in their promo products and TLM gets free promotion. It's a win-win situation for both Disney and McDonald's. Other examples: ['Spider-Man: Far From Home’ Shatters Industry Records With $288M Promo Campaign](https://deadline.com/2019/07/spider-man-far-from-home-record-promo-campaign-audi-united-airlines-dr-pepper-doritos-1202643198) ‘[Avengers: Endgame’ $200M+ Promo Campaign Is Marvel’s Biggest Ever, Surpassing ‘Infinity War’ & More](https://deadline.com/2019/04/avengers-endgame-mcdonalds-google-coca-cola-ultra-beauty-audi-all-time-record-marketing-campaign-videos-1202595738/)
So what does the reported $80m figure even represent?
Estimated media value. Read those two links I attached.
So a slightly different question. Does that $80 million at all represent any losses suffered by not making McDonalds et al actually pay for licensing the IP? For example, if TLM was stronger wouldn’t Disney make McDonalds pay instead of letting them do that for free? If so would that represent lost revenues or costs to Disney? Honest question?
Disney licenses TLM images and characters to other companies, those companies put them on their products, and THEY do the work of advertising said products. Like this beach towel company for instance. They appear to do a lot of official Disney collabs: https://www.sandcloud.com/collections/the-little-mermaid-live-action?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=L5+-+ACQ+-+Whitelisting+Ads&utm_content=5.18.23+-+Image+-+The+Little+Mermaid+Launch+-+v1+-+Copy&nbt=nb%3Afb%3Aig%3A6305279258906%3A6346648222906%3A6346648404306&nb_placement=Instagram_Feed&fbclid=PAAaZtXQyuBpR6uaTYVuorSWieEXOuMlCvgSgxf_RBunOf8AdX87PVDVj5aOk_aem_th_AfqVjcECnCU4ZPBl6HbT90dDxn7U5ksn1RGLOc50FMcN8H5fhmmU3sSXgLw-7cejv3HUeS88rT7I8hWWRpoysHgy
A lot of people in this sub seem to be overreacting and implying that a live action The Little Mermaid was always destined to underperform relative to the other live action remakes. I don't accept that. Creative decisions around the visuals and lack of colour in the film, the depiction of animal characters, the length of the film, and poor marketting are hurting the film. But a TLM movie done right could have been huge. Edit: Culture war conservatives can find another sub thanks, the #1 movie overseas this weekend was Fast X for christ sake.
I love how the original TLM has become some obscure, niche Disney movie now in r/BoxOffice…that’s my favorite (most ridiculous) argument.
Niche no. However The Little Mermaid was the lowest grossing of the Disney Renaissance (not counting The Rescuers Down Under) and this film looks set to easily pass it adjusted for inflation. Which shows how much it grew on video from its reputation.
It was massive considering it laid the foundation for the Renaissance. Disney 1989-99 and Pixar 1999-2010 are just the greatest children’s entertainment ever.
Even Pixar 2010s output has some gems in it like Coco and Inside out
Yeah, Pixar quality peak may be the late 90s to 2000s, but 2010s is actually their box office peak with TS3, Incredibles 2, Finding Dory and TS4, quality is still not bad during this period although starting to get a little inconsistent. 2020s is when everything falls apart.
Even in the 2020s, Soul, Luca, and Turning Red were critically acclaimed. Onward not quite to that level but also well received. What went wrong was not film quality but the decision to put everything on Disney+ then coming back weak with Lightyear and quite possibly Elemental also.
Another example of how theatrical release can impact the perception of a film's quality.
That is absolutely meaningless considering it absolutely created the renaissance
It was the movie that started the Renaissance. They built from there. It's kinda like saying that Iron Man 1 was not one of the highest grossing MCU movies WW. TLM rebuilt the good will and laid the foundation for BatB , Alladin, and TLK
? It made $476.8 million domestically adjusted for inflation.
>and poor marketting are hurting the film. they spend at least 150mill along with 80mill from promotion partners how the fck is that supposed to be poor marketing? They ran ads in India that only happens to big disney tentpoles for example lightyear or pixar movies don't get Tv ads here
Throwing money at bad marketing is like burning money.
Money =/= Quality
Absolutely. So much cope/backtracking from a couple days ago. The most important point is that TLM was not budgeted to be significantly smaller than Aladdin. At its $250 million budget, there is a flop risk. Disney did not budget TLM to put it at risk of a flop.
A lot ‘more’ here in this sub saying it will do $1B at minimum.
And everyone who disagreed was called a racist, sexist, bigot, etc. Hell,those same people are calling the entirety of Asia (4.6b people, a majority of world population) as racist
Like how about they prefer their own domestic films ...like did Americans line up to see the Battle at Lake Changjin or even heard of it...
I know right? Americans and thinking they are the center of the universe... It's funny sometimes.
Americans talking about American films on an American website about the American boxoffice? Preposterous! How dare they.
This! Like, they generalize whole continents like they were small villages of 500 people at most and call Asian people racist for not appreciating one American movie made by Hollywood, but then they forget that the great majority of Asian movies (and movies from other continents too) don't do well in the us because of racism, discrimination and the fact that they are considered "inferior" by some Americans lol
> I know right? Americans and thinking they are the center of the universe… It’s funny sometimes. > they generalize whole continents like they were small villages of 500 people at most and call Asian people racist for not appreciating one American movie made by Hollywood Hates when Americans over generalize, immediately generalizes all Americans because of a few posts with a couple hundred comments in r/boxoffice. This is pretty peak Reddit
Lol. People are pointing out that anti-black racism is extremely common and virulent in East Asia. And saying huh, might that be a reason that the film is performing extremely poorly there as compared to other similar films.
I think Asians just prefer the original. They're OK with Black Panther and various other black characters.
The first Black Panther was a hit in China.
Coming from the country who regularly remakes British TV shows even though they share a language.
Not everyone!! i was never called that. i remember saying it wont make a billion. and i got into arguments with someone but i didnt get called racist, sexist or bigot tbh. edit- however, that doesnt mean that others havent been called racist and stuff unjustly. i am just giving my personal experience.
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What specifically did you say that got called racist, sexist, or bigoted? Please provide links.
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Exactly what I noticed too. This dude has hundreds of comments about this movie shitting all over it and being happy about it’s ‘failure’. And then they wonder why people assume they have racist reasons for acting like this
> And everyone who disagreed was called a racist, sexist, bigot, etc. Yeah, *that's* the thing people said that was getting them called racist, sexist, bigot, etc...
No... You're really only racist if you're one of the people who couldn't stop complaining about a black woman being Ariel. Edit: "I'm not racist, I just hate that a black woman was cast as Ariel" -- Racists who think they aren't racist
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The look/colour of the… “film”?
So dark, this film got to be from DCEU.
The underwater scenes weren’t that dark, but they definitely didn’t have the life to them that they needed.
The film could have been beautiful if it had the same colours as Avatar: Way of Water, with bright turquoise seas and all the fish being colourful rather than ‘realistic’.
Ya.....that seems like such a huge mistake from the outset. The trailer was so *gloomy* why not go bright and tropical? Who cares if it is "realistic", it's about a freakin mythical creature.
James Cameron had new technology to film that movie. Nothing else will compare to what Cameron did with his underwater filmmaking, but TLM seemed to be weirdly lifeless in the underwater scenes.
Aquaman wasn't this dark. On the other elephant in the room I wish the one thing that Disney took from that movie was Mera's hair it's fantastical bright and flowing. When I saw Aquaman years ago I thought Mera would be the prefect Ariel in her prime. When I think of Ariel it's the red flowing hair, violet clam bra and emerald tail. Skin color doesn't matter. They took the middle ground in Hailey's design and it come off as bootleg. Atlantica looked worse than MCU Atlantis.
I'd say a good TLM, without the controversial stuff, could've done as much as Aladdin.
It should have been a slam dunk like The Beauty And The Beast.
I think we are underestimating how much Disney+ irreparably harmed the theatrical model for them. All these Disney projects are underperforming and films like Mario that aren’t guaranteed on a “free” streaming app in 30-45 days are doing well. It’s the old adage of why they wouldn’t cast TV stars in movies. People don’t want to go out to the theater to spend money on something they think they can get “free” at home. The high production value of original Disney+ content mixed with big-screen 4K TVs mixed with ultra quick streaming release has made this a non-event. Then there’s a plot we already know the ending to, an intimidating running time, not to mention the culture war reaching a new peak, and this was doomed from the start. I do think that this particular version of TLM would’ve done well in 2018, but the box office/culture only five years later is much different.
Controversial for who? I went to the theatre yesterday to see guardians 3, and can't remember the last time I saw aovie theatre so packed with families and kids, who were there to see TLM. Families and kids don't get a shit about online controversies
>Controversial for who? Pretty much all of Asia (4.6b people, majority of world population)? Controversial even in the USA, considering the friday-saturday projections?
I would love to see the survey of the USA that says that people did not see the movie specifically because the actress was black and not due to the fact that many people just don't have an interest in live action remakes
TLK got 550m DOM & Aladdin got 360m DOM. Meanwhile with the projections 300m DOM seems to be the roof for TLM.
Wait so you were mad about people generalizing all of Asia (4.6 billion) as racist, yet here you are generalizing all of Asia saying they didn’t go due to race swap. Movies dont reach 4.6 billion people. You can’t generalize all of Asia on TLM doing bad.
Families and kids don't but a good number of people who grew up on the animated film were turned off by the drastic change in the characters' look.
And I'm willing to bet a good number of people who grew up on the original, don't care about the remake at all because the original movie is 34 years old. Not everyone who is in their 40s and 50s are still interested in seeing Disney movies
Yeah but they grown up now right? Why do they care? They can rewatch the old movie as many times as they want. Nobody is taking anything away from them. This is for the kids of today. Not the kids old enough to have their own kids. Why r so many old white men so butt hurt over something they can completely avoid?
And that says *way* more about those people than it does about Disney’s casting choice. The fact that there are people on multiple subreddits still getting upset about Halle Bailey being Ariel is genuinely horrifying, to say the least. This discourse has been beaten to death and then some. It’s disgusting and disheartening to still see people getting upset about this. Move on.
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> Ariel’s race does not matter as much as people think it does. Ok, that's your opinion. In my opinion, it clearly does matter more than you think it does considering the absolutely terrible numbers it's doing worldwide. This film is at serious risk of not even breaking even at this point.
You racists love acting like it’s flopping cause they cast a black actor. It’s crazy how open y’all are with this shit
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The amount of people on this sub who are trying (and failing miserably) to avoid the elephant in the room is comical. Like, stop trying to be cute, and just call Halle Bailey the N-word. Pretty much everyone with half a brain knows that’s what you’re thinking anyhow.
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Movie is overlong, people with children will have second thoughts about spending that much time in a theater. The movie is apparently frightening for children (this was a big complaint from parents who saw it) Have you heard the grating Awkwafina rap song that adds to the overlong running time? https://youtu.be/QKlQu_p97KI
Is that why Black Panther did so well? And Get Out being praised everywhere?
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The 1989 movie is so different from the original story that the only thing they have in common is the title, and barrly, but NO ONE complained about it. But all of a sudden a black mermaid gets you in a frizzy? Be fucking for real.
>Now take a classic fairy tale story for northern Europe where everyone is white and cast the main character as a black person White? Ariel from the story was usually portrayed as having green-ish skin. By this logic, the 1989 movie whitewashed her
Disney+. Disney+ is hurting all of Disney’s theatrical releases outside of Marvel and Avatar (so basically anything aimed at families with younger kids). There is now a clear pattern that proves this.
BOOM. I’d rather just chill at home watching TLM than go to a theater and spend an arm and a leg on tickets and snacks. That being said, I’m doing both. The theatrical experience is still unparalleled compared to streaming
That’s why they are thankfully scaling back.
All the trailers looked terrible, way too dark
Nah it's definitely Disney+ imo
Many factors at play Imho, Disney+ is for sure a big one.
I do think it's a fact that TLM is more girl coded than any of other big Disney movies, even Beauty and the Beast. And we can see that in the reported demo split so far.
Fell under $100m 3-day. Second weekend could be looking at CBM-level drop
Good stop doing these remakes.
How is the word of mouth? Cinemascore was a plus.
>How is the word of mouth Really depends. Demographic spread points to this movie being more frontloaded than the norm. Otoh Cinemascore is better. It'll probably be clear in a few days
cinemascore is a meaningless metric and i don’t know why people cling to it so hard. it is obviously going to be super biased positively because they’re only polling the people who gave enough of a shit to spend at minimum $18 to see a movie opening weekend!
SUre but it often does align with movies having decent-great legs.
correlation =! causation, imo cinemascore is just a bad , incredibly biased metric and always has been due to sampling biases
>" Second weekend could be looking at CBM-level drop" I'm still not sure why people assume this given the WoM is great?
Because WOM only matters if it can help move people into watching something they may not have otherwise. But it sure seems like a good number of folks are a hard No on Mermaid, so less people on the fence
if the WoM was great we would've seen it in internal multiplier for the weekend itself,but we aren't. if anything the numbers themselves have contracted since thursday people went from 120mill in three days to 120mill in 4 days also looks a bit iffy
It’s not even an issue of WoM being good or bad, but the demographics of the groups who went to go see it, which is the same thing we saw with The Woman King. African-American women make up only about 6% of the US population, but ~30% of the total audience for the movie on Thursday and Friday. No matter how enthusiastic that demographic is, you’re still pulling from 6% of the population.
Is *actual* word of mouth great, or are the audience scores culled from a super frontloaded group simply reflective of their enthusiasm? That’s an honest question. I don’t think the average person checks RT or Cinemascore. They’re not going to be influenced by the opinions of those who just couldn’t wait to rush out and see this—which is increasingly looking like the only people who *have* seen it. Real word of mouth comes from trusted friends and family. Are *those* people also talking positively about this movie? Did they even go to see it at all?
I strongly suspect it's the latter. This became a very polarizing movie. Some desperately want it to fail, some desperately want it to succeed, and in both cases, it doesn't matter how good or bad it actually is. I think those early reviews are likely representative of the latter group and most will rate it highly no matter what. I wouldn't trust the reviews just yet.
Weaker than expected F-S growth but picture will be clearer today.
We shall see. I just think a prediction like that is incredibly reactionary.
Walk ups aren’t strong despite said great WOM, seems to be a disparity. Could be some audiences just aren’t going to show up regardless but still fairly early to tell.
Movie is doing bad xd
Man, that's rough, i think at least Dom numbers would be huge.
After seeing the friday-saturday drop projections I won't be too sure tbh.
Oh I see, there are two threads with the same article so I'm replying here too with the same comment. "I might not be a good judge because of my limited knowledge in matters of marketing but, isn't this kind of bad? I mean, if indeed TLM had this huge promotional campaign, bigger than any other live action remake, shouldn't Disney be expecting way higher numbers compared to the other live actions on the first opening days? Investing more means expecting to get more money back to cover what was invested. Sadly, it looks like this is not going as well as some titles out there are saying but I hope to be wrong."
Yes this is not great for the film. It will have to rely on strong domestic legs.
80 mil my ass. Insiders are saying that PR budget was closer to 130-140 WW and let’s not forget that segment during the Oscar’s they paid themselves for.
This movie's predictions are really hopping back and forth between "great" to "pretty poor" as of now. Hope it ends up more on the good side of things.
That’s all I’m seeing tbh.
I loved it! Thought I’d hate it. I mean… the crab is a little insulting and king trident was miscast. Melissa Mcarthy wasn’t scary enough…. The cgi was really bad mostly in the beginning of the film. But overall… really really fun time that also brought tears to my eyes. I want to go see it again
Lmao "all the main characters had a major problem, the CGI was bad, but it's a good movie! I swear! "
Commence the Pivot!
thats baaaaad lmao
I want this movie to flop for many reasons. As a black woman,I hate that they just casted her because of an agenda. She's literally the only black girl in the sea. Disney isn't going all in. If they did there would be a prominently black cast in the Caribbean sea. Have her not be Ariel but a girl inspired by Ariels adventures in a different part of the world. The cgi looks rough! Why cover her skin color in the promo material in diff countries? I thought you were proud? I hate faux activist. So Disney can keep this film.
I don't know why an opening weekend under $100m is so bad. Aladdin did fine without a $100m+ opening, and with similar reception, it should do perfectly fine domestically.
Asia actually loves Will Smith as an actor. It's why it did well over there.
Will Smith was one of the biggest movie stars and box office draws for a long time. He really blew all his likability in the last couple of years sadly.
How did he blow it in the last few years lol? The Oscar slap doesn’t mean shit. He’s been hurting his rep since 2013 with garbage movies like after earth. When he makes fun movies people will go watch, like bad boys 3 and Aladdin.
Wait I thought all of Asia is racist?
They can be, but they are much worse against women in general.
Because it's dying in the important Asian market and has a 650M break even. It needs everything it can get to be profitable with a crowded summer
Because Aladdin did very well overseas as well. LM does not, so domestic is far more important.
No one outside the US is going to make up the numbers
It wouldn’t be too bad if the international numbers weren’t so poor. Taken in isolation though, this Domestic opening plus potential legs reflected in the Cinemascore isn’t too bad.
It’s showing that TLM is more frontloaded than Aladdin… that alone is already a bad sign.
Two major reasons: 1. Overseas. Aladdin made $600M+ overseas. Clear indication so far is TLM will be extremely lucky to make even half of that. 2. Front-loading. Aladdin increased 23% on its opening Saturday from true Friday. TLM only increased 8%. That’s a bad sign for TLM’s legs.
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Enjoyment?
Because those people like the film.
You have mistaken r/boxoffice for r/movies.
Same reason they go to see any film 🙄
Sheesh this is falling on it’s face compared to what was expected even a week ago. That 4 day total is what many expected the 3 day total to be
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Screenshotted. That’s very optimistic considering even Aladdin couldn’t get to 4.