The Little Mermaid’s box office flop can be blamed on a number of different elements in, and surrounding the film.
The new live-action The Little Mermaid film is not doing as well as expected in the box office.
And although it would be easy to blame its failure on the controversy surrounding the film, The Little Mermaid’s poor storytelling and disappointing visuals have not helped.
Why did The Little Mermaid flop?
Disney’s most recent live-action remake, The Little Mermaid, has officially been branded a big flop for only grossing about $326.7 million globally, so far.
This film has already seen a more than 50 percent drop in its second week released in the box office and has had a disappointing international performance.
This is especially concerning if you take into account that live-action films like The Lion King and Aladdin grossed about $543.638 million and $356.6 million, respectively, in the United States and Canada, alone.
While it is completely normal for some films to just fail without any clear reason, The Little Mermaid has been shrouded in controversy since the film’s announcement.
And, on top of that, the film’s lackluster visuals and annoying characters are simply not enticing audiences to watch or re-watch the film.
The Little Mermaid’s poor international performance
Some sources have blamed underlying racist views for The Little Mermaid’s poor performance in international markets like China and South Korea, where the film only brought in about $3.6 million and $4.4 million, respectively, in its first ten days, and garnered a slew of negative reviews.
However, this cannot be the case, since the Aladdin live-action remake (which starred Will Smith and featured a diverse cast) grossed about $91 million in South Korea and $53.5 million in China during its box office run in 2019.
The Little Mermaid has been branded “annoying”
Prevailing racism is not the only controversy that The Little Mermaid has had to face. The song “The Scuttlebutt,” which was written for the film by Lin-Manuel Miranda and performed by Awkwafina, has been trending lately – for the wrong reasons.
Unfortunately, instead of being the catchy, modern addition to the film that Disney likely envisioned, most people just found the song (and the character) very annoying, even for a kid’s movie.
The film’s lackluster visuals and disappointing CGI
Another aspect of The Little Mermaid which has had all corners of the internet buzzing since its release is the fact that the film’s CGI is not very good.
Unfortunately, Avatar: The Way of Water, seemingly set the bar entirely too high for what the audience expects underwater CGI and landscapes to look like.
And The Little Mermaid has simply not delivered the visual punch that audiences were expecting to see.