It might be thirty-five years later, but a live-action remake came to the screen for the mermaid Princess Ariel and her obsession with the human world. The latest Disney remake, whether you subconsciously loathe them or not, made a sizeable $95.5 million in its opening weekend and should push to slightly under $120 million once Memorial Day hits. Yours truly is young enough to remember when adaptations flocked worldwide with singing mermaids underwater getting a taste of humanity and when the 1988 animated feature was still a strong viewing at the homestead. Whether or not you agree with Tony Chambers about this one and “Beauty and the Beast” being the favorite movies back then doesn’t matter in this case; both will make their money as they did decades ago (well, let’s be a little lenient about Ariel for the moment).
But, moving back to the numbers, the remake made $68.3 million from 51 international markets, putting it at $164 million worldwide (as it “should” be at $200 million worldwide over Memorial Day). Unfortunately, that combined gross is less than Fast X‘s global release last weekend, and due to objective frontloading, this looks more like Solo: A Star Wars Story than Aladdin or The Lion King (2019). Thus, that means it needs good legs for the remainder of the summer season to qualify as a success. Perhaps we should be on the lookout for pundits to claim that politics and racial tactics utilized for the film are what will prove detrimental to its ROI, but much like with Lightyear, no one asked for another remake/spinoff in the Disney realm. The toxic comments won’t make an impact, so we’ll need to thrust those out of the equation. Disney has silently made their deathbed for subpar collections as of late and trained audiences to say, “We’ll wait to Disney+ releases it.”
Speaking of Disney, one major positive is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 continues to leg out with $19.95 million in its fourth weekend and has earned $731 million globally. If it continues with a standard rate of descent, it’ll reach around $820-825 million worldwide, which is a notable win for the trilogy capper. Much like Jon Watts, James Gunn made a remarkable trilogy for the MCU, and even with a rebooted/different version down the line, it has his blessing. (Let’s hope the fourth volume doesn’t screw it up, though.)
Fast X took a bit of a nosedive in its second weekend domestically, only earning $23 million as it faintly passed $100 million domestically. Even when discounting Memorial Day, the tenth installment is playing great overseas. However, the high budget remains the jarring outlier of whether it’ll make an ROI over raw theatrical grosses. It has earned $507 million thus far, meaning it might have enough in the tank to slip past F9 and reach around $730-750 million worldwide. The two factors working for it, China and the announcement of two follow-ups, are still working against its potential since one demonstrates it needs to prove its worth to Hollywood, while the other might become wearisome if Universal cannot put out quality two remaining sequels. At least the franchise has topped $7 billion worldwide, so.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie earned $6.27 million in its eighth weekend; it has made $1.276 billion worldwide, meaning it’ll top Frozen‘s cume to become the second-biggest animated grosser ever. Does this verify that Chris Pratt might not only be the biggest of the “Chrises” of 2023 but of all time now? Joke aside, Universal might hold the crown for the remainder of the year for the highest-earning film thanks to a generational IP.
Newcomers The Machine made $4.9 million, About My Father with $4.25 million, Kandahar‘s $2.41 million, and A24’s You Hurt My Feelings received $1.39 million.
Next weekend sees, the release of Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, The Boogeyman, and Past Lives.
