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The “get woke, go broke” crowd has egg on its face again, with Disney’s new live-action The Little Mermaid raking in a cool $117 million at the domestic box office and another $68 million internationally over the Memorial Day weekend. The anti-woke haters, you may recall, were outraged that a black actress, Halle Bailey, took on the titular role, and had convinced themselves that the film would be a colossal flop.
So how are the doomsayers reacting to the film’s success? Like the UFO cultists in the sociology classic When Prophecy Fails, they’ve found reasons to convince themselves that they weren’t wrong.
The China Syndrome
Though The Little Mermaid did quite well in the US, it did poorly in China, taking in less than $4 million over the weekend and giving the haters an excuse to call the successful film a flop.
It’sa me, Mario
On PJ Media, Matt Margolis sniffed that the movie hasn’t done as well as The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a massive hit that has taken in more than a billion dollars in box office so far.
Despite all the hype surrounding The Little Mermaid, and the benefit of a long weekend opening, it failed to top The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s opening weekend domestic box office of $204.6 million. Comparing apples to apples, The Little Mermaid made $95.5 million, excluding its Memorial Day take. Ouch.
Really? $95 million is an “ouch?”
So, to put it another way, The Super Mario Bros. Movie made more than double what The Little Mermaid did over the same period of time. But, the media is presenting The Little Mermaid as some box office record breaker. It’s not. Disney remains dethroned as the box office king.
Talk about moving the goalposts.
Future Shock
Our old friends at Bounding Into Comics found some guy on YouTube who crunched some numbers and somehow deduced that the film might not look like a flop now, but it will in the future.
“I would not be surprised if when all the numbers comes in it’s a $50 to $100 million loss. That’s the kind of numbers we’re seeing from this movie right now,” he shared.
Ironically, OMB Reviews then predicted this could be a first for Disney, “This could be the first time that a full-fledged, full-featured, full distribution movie from Disney, the live-action Disney remakes ends up being an actual box office flop.”
Let’s stick a pin in this one and see how these predictions fare in the long run.
Review-bombing run
The haters have also taken solace in the fact that the movie got a lot of one-star reviews on IMDb. Never mind that many of them seem to be from bots and from people who haven’t seen the film.
The truth-challenged Gateway Pundit declared in a headline that the “Woke ‘Little Mermaid’ Reboot Completely Bombs in Reviews, IMBD Blames Online Trolls, Manipulates Votes to Give Higher Audience Score!”
Well, part of that is true. IMDb says it had “detected unusual voting activity on this title”–by which they mean a review-bombing campaign–and that “to preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.”
Right now, the IMDb rating is 7.0 out of 10; on Rotten Tomatoes, where they only poll “verified audience” members, the film has a 95% audience score.
Hideous Kinky
Some Little Mermaid haters have redirected their ire towards the New York Times, a favorite right-wing target that ran a negative review of the film complaining that the remake “reeks of obligation and noble intentions” and chastising it for missing “joy, fun, mystery, risk, flavor, kink… .”
Naturally, the haters are aghast at seeing the word “kink” in a review of a kids’ film, and have therefore concluded that the Times is full of pedophiles.
It’s become a new right-wing mantra: When in doubt, accuse someone of being a pedophile.
Anyway, in conclusion, cry moar you bunch of racist idiots.
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Ariel is a fish with boobs. Skin colour is the least of things that need explaining.
But Hollywood accounting is so leveraged now that a film needs to make 2 to 3 times its official budget to break even. Scary.
Hence the ever more growing importance of Bollywood and indie films etc.
I’m a big fan of old school Hong Kong cinema. So when I was there I got chatting to some fellow film buffs. They had loads of fascinating tales of what’s going on domestically in China and also Chinese money in Hollywood.
(I’m aiming to put together a little film myself of my adventures.)
Hasn’t it been like that for a long while now? Or am I just thinking of creative accounting when during the Art Buchwald lawsuit Paramount claimed Coming to America had not, in fact, made any money?
@ nequam
It seems to be an age old issue. You can google massively successful films that technically didn’t make a a profit.
Sometimes that is just because of creative accounting. The first Star Trek film had a massive budget for the time. But most of that was absorbing the wasted costs of the abortive Star Trek: Phase Two series. It’s pretty common for people to land debt from previous canceled projects onto other films. It gets classed as part of pre-production costs. And think how long projects can get stuck in Development Hell. It becomes a bit of a feedback loop. The longer a film gets stuck, the more expensive it becomes to make.
But also now just the legitimate costs are enormous. Marketing budgets can exceed productions costs. And whilst a lot of films no longer require physical prints to be produced, the tweaking necessary so a film can be watched on everything from IMAX to a 4″ phone screen really takes up a lot of post production time and expense.
I’m confused about the guy claiming that this will be Disney’s first “full-fledged, full-featured, full distribution movie” to flop. Even limiting the list to their live-action remakes, they have had several that drastically underperformed.
And if we’re talking big-budget, high-profile “Disney Canon” films, they have had quite a few flops. Apart from the studio nearly going under during the Dark Age from failures like The Black Cauldron, even films that Walt produced have failed – the best movie Walt ever had a hand in, Sleeping Beauty, LOST money at the box office and it took home video decades later for it to turn a profit.
(Admittedly, this was one of those “it brought in enough revenue that it would have been a hit, except it had wound up going so far over-budget that there was basically no way that box office revenue was going to break even, much less generate profit, and it was finished and released more out of an attempt to recoup money that had already been spent” cases.)
As for The Little Mermaid remake, obvious nobody is actually seeing it and all those tickets were bought by George Soros.
They will probably go the Black Panther route and start claiming that the film is really conservative.
Sort of related, some people are trying the ‘go woke, go broke’ thing because Target has lost some market value. But according to the finance people all supermarkets are down a bit because of some factors in the last few months and Target isn’t actually doing that badly compared.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FxURNaEaIAEMszl?format=jpg&name=large
@SpecialFFrog: It is very heterosexual-positive, but I’m not sure they can get past the lead’s skin color. They still aren’t down with what used to be called miscegenation.
Movies didn’t break even till they brought in 2.5x what they cost in the 80s, which is when I started keeping track of such things. If it’s now 3x, I’m not surprised — everything’s gone up!
And just imagine the PPV, streaming and video sales to kids who need to watch it daily.
I haven’t seen it, but I have heard Ms. Bailey sing, seen clips, and she’s definitely cute, so I thought the casting was fine.
And it’s not like the animated version stuck to the original story, especially the ending.
But yes. CRY MOAR, losers.
About the kink comment:
On paper it’s valid critique.
But if you stop & think about it for a minute, people would be amazed at how much of the weirder kinks were instilled by children’s media.
Catgirls: M’Ress of Caitan, “Star Trek: The Animated Series.” & there was an April O’Neill catgirl episode of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Standard issue BDSM/Leather? Give it a few years & watch a lot of twentysomethings copped to be turned on to that by the big girl in “Euphoria.” & who could blame em? She’s banging.
AB? “Goosebumps #28: The Cuckoo Clock of Doom,” & its subsequent t.v. adaptation. Or if you’re a bit older the made-for-t.v. movie/failed pilot “W.E.I.R.D. World” featuring the lovely Paula Marshall as Mommy.
TG? (Which we should specify that while gender dysmorphia is a real thing, the idea of going all the way as in able to reproduce is a very real fetish, though with reproducing only existing as a subcategory within the fetish) Hell, it seems like every few years HBO gets a wild hair up its ass & uses Blake Edwards’ “Switch” to pad out the programming schedule for about six weeks. It’s considerably tamer, but before AMC shifted to original programming, it’d do the same thing with “Goodbye Charlie.”
My point: name any kink, kids’ programming has gone there. Even some pretty dark stuff
Mind control
And how many supernatural romances have we seen where one partner’s a ghost? I can think of at least “The Heavenly Kid” & this one odd Amy Jo Johnson movie that ran on Disney Channel A LOT in the late 90s
@Allendrel:
Yeah, the eighties TANKED for Disney. HARD.
Easy to armchair quarterback in hindsight.
But Disney’s animation staff in the early 80s included:
Tim Burton
Henry Selick
Brad Bird
&
John Lasseter*
And they FIRED THEM ALL.
*I know okay? I know. Do you have any idea how hard that year was? Lasseter, Joss Whedon, & Warren Ellis. All in the same year. Ripped the heart out of nerd culture. Which in my darker moments I can’t help but think was the point.
But you can’t talk about modern animation without Pixar, & you can’t talk about Pixar without mentioning Lasseter.
@Alan Robertshaw
I love your film (in ShawScope!). The visuals are stunning. No plot and also no time to eat my popcorn, but such is the nature of test footage.
These guys are dicks, no question.
But they did manage to dumb luck their way into a valid point.
A successful opening weekend is not necessarily indicative of long-term success; it’s too early to tell.
And as was pointed out above, the modern Hollywood business model is frankly insane. And unsustainable.
And superhero media across all mediums is entering a doldrum.
A recent BookScan release of the top 450 best selling graphic novels of last year showed exactly two superhero pieces on there. & one of those (the better selling one I might add) was a new edition of something that has never actually gone out of print & is nearly forty years old at this point (“Batman: Year One”). Obviously an expanding marketplace presence & more recognition of international media is good. It’s good for comics as a medium. It expands the capacity for artistic expression in the medium & creates a more diverse reader base, which is a multi-level good. But those figures indicate that even the core audience for the type of story Hollywood has taken out a very big bet on is getting sick of it.
@jmc7r
Seriously… was this written by AI? Or just someone with seriously no clue.
Yes. Let’s take information about the bookstore market (BookScan) of comics to make a sweeping generalization about all superhero media (which this specific thing “The Little Mermaid” has nothing to do with) in general. Despite the fact that for superhero comics (unfortunately) the main market is still the ‘direct market’ (comic book specialty stores). As in I yet to see a year in the 10+ years I’m following the industry where there were more than a couple on that specific book store list. Heck, most direct market comics don’t make on it, up to critical and fan favorite darlings like Saga (which is a sci-fi).
Book market comics are overwhelmingly children’s books like Dog Man with some manga sprinkled in.
This is not new info or an evidence of ‘superhero media across all mediums is entering a doldrum’ this is evidence of ‘industry trends continue’.
By the way if you want to see sales of superhero books you’ve to look at the direct market data which would mean Comichron (seem to be down right now annoyingly). Why yes this is actually a lot smaller market than you would suspect based on their popculture omnipresence but this is how it always (or at least since the 90s market crash) was.
ALSO QED: HOLLYWOOD IS A FOOL TO NOT INVEST IN THE DOG MAN CINEMATIC UNIVERSE!
Ran out of editing time… but I went and checked the Bookscan list (cleaned source so doesn’t contain the illustrated novels it occasionally includes) and only went to 450 (the list is to 750):
DC (about 19 titles on the full list):
136 – THE SANDMAN BOOK ONE (Questionable if superhero)
258 – BATMAN: YEAR ONE (Reprint of classic)
280 – TEEN TITANS: BEAST BOY LOVES RAVEN (YA book)
292 – WATCHMEN (2019 EDITION) (Reprint of classic)
358 – THE SANDMAN BOOK TWO (Still questionable)
406 – BATMAN/FORTNITE: ZERO POINT
435 – THE LONG HALLOWEEN (Reprint of classic)
Image (5 titles on the full list, 3 of them is Invincible which is still superhero):
305 – INVINCIBLE COMPENDIUM VOLUME 1
Table if anybody need it: https://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/top-750-edit-file.htm
Marvel only got one book at 484 (MOON KNIGHT BY LEMIRE & SMALLWOOD: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION) on but they historically couldn’t sell on the book market to save their lives… they tend to own about 2/3 of the direct market though.
Unless The Little Mermaid marks a massive sea change (sorry) it won’t be a flop because these live action remakes have pretty much all been reliable money-makers for Disney. The Lion King 2019 (which I think is an objectively bad film – its so fecking weird to watch) is one of the highest grossing films of all time.
Also, I’m not sure how the economics of streaming work but think of all those kids for whom this will be become their favourite ever film, to be watch ad infinitum on Disney Plus.
Eh… if I’m at it if someone wants to get lost in Bookscan analysis:
https://www.comicsbeat.com/npd-bookscan-2022-graphic-novel-sales/
Scroll to the end, the guy is doing this for almost 20 years and has links to his previous years columns about it there.
As I said Comichron seems to be down but their twitter is still alive which can be mined for interesting things if someone has the time (and can suffer twitter):
https://twitter.com/comichron
The biggest problem with direct market comics is the direct market itself. But that’s a rant for another time.
@ jmc7r:
Once saw a comic in which a kid is parked by their parents in front of some “good wholesome entertainment,” i.e. a Saturday-morning superhero cartoon in which the need to avoid any realistic violence means that the hero can only be tied up, tickled on the soles of his feet, inflated with helium, etc, as the kid sits watching and thinking “I’m sure this won’t awaken anything in me that will affect my adult tastes.”
@jmc7r:
Catgirls: M’Ress of Caitan, “Star Trek: The Animated Series.” & there was an April O’Neill catgirl episode of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Let’s not forget Kitty Jo of the Cattanooga Cats (whom numerous viewers have pointed out looks for all the world like Daphne’s fursona; for whatever it might be worth, Cattanooga Cats and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? premiered on successive weeks in September 1969.)
Here (with bonus catgirl bondage!) is Kitty Jo, singing the praises of a beau who treats her with respect:
@Full Metal Ox:
New One on Me.
And you ain’t kidding. That is straight-up catgirl Daphne.
@jmc7r; @Moon Custafer:
Another warm fuzzy memory of Wholesome Family Entertainment Back In The Day: The Great Mouse Striptease.
Who wants to be the one to break it to these guys that the original Ursula was based on a drag queen?
Well, if sales in China are a problem, maybe they could do another remake with a Chinese mermaid. I’m sure the racists would be okay with that, right…?
@ raging bee
That might not be a bad idea.
The people telling me about film financing explained how Chinese backers insist on Chinese actors; so the film will get watched domestically and help recoup the budget.
It’s common now for the Chinese version of a Hollywood film to be a different edit.
That’s partly a censorship thing (In Chinese Star Wars the Death Star just explodes for no apparent reason) but also to put more emphasis on Asian actors.
Sometimes there are entirely different scenes. Iron Man 3 replaces some scenes set in the US with alternatives set in China for example. And there are also actor replacements for alternative takes.
Nothing new there though. In China they didn’t watch The Green Hornet; they had this..
@ kat
Thank you!
Oh yeah. That had to be done. When in China…. etc. But I just love Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest films.
Being über nerdy, I was able to source the LUTs they now use in Chinese films. Partly to be authentic. But also I prefer them to the ubiquitous Orange/Teal colour grading of nearly all Hollywood films now.
China was just ahead of the curve on Green Hornet. Who even remembers the other guy’s name? The only way I can remember Van Johnson is that he nearly shares a name with the infinitely more exciting Portal character played by J. K. Simmons.